Not ANBU
by nom-de-bataille
Summary: Once ANBU, always ANBU, and Kakashi embodied that more than anyone else. Now he's been tasked with training three green cadets, to mold as he sees fit. He better hurry. Five cutthroat nations stand with knives at each other's backs and unknown to them all is the tinder beneath their feet, waiting for a single ember to ignite the flames of war. AU
1. Chapter 1

Konoha, a city hidden amongst the leaves, bristled with a forest of gargantuan trees thrusting into the steel plate sky above. They were monolithic, like pillars holding up the heavens, each large enough for twenty men to stand fingertip to fingertip around them. Their canopy held most of the winter cold and snow at bay, leaving the city blanketed by a perpetual faux-summer green. Only the slightest drips of melting snow fell from the natural ceiling to patter against the roofs below.

Kakashi Hatake, however, did not notice.

He was fast asleep in a sparse apartment, a few books scattered on the grey carpet, a single locked shelf containing gleaming metal and a small wardrobe bolted to the wall by his futon. It was then that the knocking started, hurried, impatient, and growing faster. Kakashi's hand shot out from under the covers and retrieved a hidden blade as a muffled voice came through the front door.

"Senpai, the Hokage expects you in his office this morning at nine."

Kakashi made no reply and after a pause the voice continued.

"It's the KSA briefing. He expects you to be there on time."

Kakashi remained silent and soon heard soft footsteps fading away.

A moment later he left the bed and stepped into his bathroom. After washing his face, he stared at the image in the mirrored glass and the baleful red eye smouldering in the left side of his face. Fifteen years and the scar around that eye still ached every morning, as if it had been mere weeks since the wound that had robbed him of his original eye. He could see the water running down his face in perfect clarity as the image became chakra and imprinted itself on his mind. One more to join the similar thousands he already remembered.

He took another few minutes to continue his routine, ending with his fingers holding open his left eye as he carefully applied three drops of liquid from a glass bottle no larger than his thumb. It burned, as it did every morning, but he didn't even flinch as the burning sensation drilled into his skull.

The blade was still with him, lying on the edge of the basin. It was the same place he always put it. Without looking he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and held it against the corner of his crimson eye as his other hand gripped the basin. A long second, or perhaps minutes passed as the honed tip remained stock still against the unblinking eye. Another image to join the other similar thousands. The blade clattered into the basin and Kakashi turned and left.

* * *

Naruto woke almost an hour earlier than usual. Ever since the night before a nervous buzz of energy had been shooting through his body in sparks and spurts. He had graduated from the Academy and made it into Nitodai, the Tōsotsu Tokusho Sakusen Daigakkou, the special operations and leadership school. It was the entry way into the upper crust of the Konoha Shinobi Forces. With a flip he left his bed, throwing aside the pile of tattered blankets to form a heap by the side, and moved to make himself breakfast.

There were only two rooms in his home, his bedroom and everything else, though having never been in another person's home he didn't see anything unusual in having kitchen appliances and a toilet within line of sight. Only half awake Naruto moved automatically to boil some water. He filled a small dented saucepan that was black from years of constant use. He hadn't found the kettle in the top right cupboard of his kitchen and he never would since there was little he did at home except eat and sleep, and not even that most of the time. Still, a broad grin crept onto his face as he waited for the water to boil and planted itself there. He felt that the day was going to be a good one.

Belly filled, and face washed, Naruto left his apartment just as the sun was rising. This was quite difficult to tell in Konoha depending on where you lived, and Naruto, living in one of the cheaper areas of the city, had long learned the ability to know where the sun was just by the ambient level of light.

It was a short ten-minute run to the nearest training field and as Naruto moved through the dim undergrowth of the forest he started to feel the touch of cold air against his skin. The light, too, was slowly growing and just as he was about to reach his destination he stopped on top of a large tree root. He drank in the view and watched his breath mist. Before him was a clearing beneath a break in the enormous canopy of Konoha's forests. A beam of morning light pierced into the gloom from the crack in the leafy ceiling and came to rest on a disk of fresh powder snow. It was like a reflection of the moon, somehow on grass and not water.

With a deep bracing breath Naruto jumped down towards the clearing and dug into a particular spot in the snow. A few minutes later he pulled out a large, decorated scroll.

* * *

The Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, the highest authority in Konoha and the supreme commander of its shinobi forces, was seated at his desk. The only sound in his office was the barest crackle of burning embers in his short stemmed pipe as he pulled another long draw. The smoke soon escaped from his mouth and floated lazily through the air squeezing unnaturally into various shapes. The old man was flexing his chakra in a bid to beat his boredom. It was a moment later that the smoke snapped to one side as a gust of wind blew in from the window.

"Kakashi. You're right on time." The Hokage said. "Good."

A handful of leaves fluttered to the floor as said man settled into a stance at ease.

"Hokage-sama." He replied with a short nod. Only the barest flicker betrayed his one visible eye resting for a split second on the clock hung on the wall. It said ten thirty in the morning.

A small grin graced the Hokage's face as he put away his pipe. It was a common game between the two of them, and no matter what Hatake did he always arrived precisely when the Hokage meant him to. There were twelve others in the room already, the last arriving just as Kakashi did, and only a few were recognised by the silver haired man even if they all recognised him.

"Umino-Shōi, if you would." The Hokage said.

A scarred Chūnin stepped forward with a pile of documents and began to hand them out, the coversheet stamped with the official emblem of the Konoha Shinobi Academy.

"These are the profiles and analysis of this year's graduates, along with our recommendations. As usual the majority of them are most suited to the various branches for further training but at least thirty of them have been assigned to you Jounin as Nitodai candidates." Iruka said. "Eight are Clan affiliates, fifteen are purchased commissions, five are state sponsored, one scholarship, and one special dispensation. An unusual group to say the least. Please take a few minutes to go through them."

Each individual read the contents of the documents with the practiced ease of trained operatives, quickly gleaning every bit of relevant information and forming conclusions.

"If I may Hokage-sama." Kakashi said after a few minutes.

The man nodded.

"Why have I been assigned to this duty again? Surely there are more… appropriate personnel." He continued. "I would be best put to use in returning to ANBU."

The same question had been hanging, if not on the tongues, on the minds of many of the others standing in the office. Not once had Kakashi passed a team in the previous five years.

"Ten years of ANBU is more than enough, for anyone." The Hokage replied. "You are one, if not the most, skilled of Konoha's Jounin. It would be negligent of me to put you anywhere else at this point. Don't consider this as a punishment but as favour for me."

With a nod and no other reply Kakashi accepted the reasoning. Even if he disagreed he could never say no, it wasn't in his training, even if another question remained clenched between his teeth and unspoken.

He left in a surge of chakra and so did the others soon after, leaving only Iruka and the Hokage in the office.

"Are you sure about this Hokage-sama?" Iruka spoke. "I have some concerns about Hatake-Taisa."

The Hokage waved him off.

"He's one of our best," he said. "A quarter of our ANBU force was trained by him at some point."

"Yes, but these are fresh cadets Hokage-sama, not ANBU." Iruka countered.

"Kakashi was a Genin at one point if you recall Iruka." The Hokage said.

"Yes sir…" Iruka said. "When he was five. I just hope the cadets assigned to him survive whatever he plans on doing to them…."

"And here I thought you were an optimist." The Hokage chuckled.

* * *

Later that day Kakashi was on the roof of the Academy. An orange book was clutched in his fingers, pages open, and screening his eyes from the sight of his students to be. The three young charges committed to his care were seated together and facing him. If he could have gotten away with it, he would not have been there at all. The press of that all too familiar chakra against his senses and the scent of its owner caused Kakashi's heart to quicken for one or two beats before he ruthlessly forced it to a steady pace.

From right to left their names were, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura, and finally, Uzumaki Naruto. He had read that much in their files but could hardly remember anything else, though only because of his lack of interest. He knew he would be making his own evaluations soon.

"All right." Kakashi said, dropping his book down. "I am Hatake Kakashi-Taisa and possibly your instructor if you make it into the Nitodai program."

"Possibly?" Sasuke spoke.

"Yeah, what?" Naruto joined in. "We passed the exam and got the headbands and everything!"

Kakashi shook his head.

"There's still one more test. Yes, it's true that you are considered Genin and no longer civilians once you graduate from the Academy, however, in terms of rank you are now only cadets." He said. "This distinction is important because now you are held to all the rules and regulations of the Shinobi Forces allowing you to move on to the real training."

"What does that mean exactly?" Sakura asked with a quizzical slant to her head.

"If you fail this test you will have three options." Kakashi replied and started to count on his fingers. "You may be picked up by one of the other schools such as intelligence, research and development, or logistics, and so on. You may enter the force as an enlisted member and not through the Nitodai program, or you may opt to be honourably discharged and return to life as a civilian."

If he had been anyone else, he would have laughed at their shocked expressions.

"As for being Genin, you three are Genin third class, the weakest of the weak and barely above a civilian. I myself am a Jounin, first class, colloquially known as elite Jounin. The three traditional ranks are, these days, only an indication of the general ability of a shinobi and not of actual rank in the shinobi hierarchy. Any further questions?"

Three shakes of the head were his reply.

"Good." He continued. "I've taken the liberty to draw, for each of you, equipment from the requisitions office."

With a flourish and sleight of hand Kakashi unsealed three packs from a scroll hidden on his body. To the three cadets it appeared as if the packs had simply materialised in a burst of smoke.

"you have five minutes to equip yourselves and then I will give you further instructions." Kakashi said.

Naruto immediately dug his hands through his pack, rifling through its contents. Sakura and Sasuke had taken a different approach, first reading through the papers that had come with the packs.

"I didn't know Genin had uniforms Hatake-Taisa" Sakura said.

Naruto was pulling out that said uniform, unfolding it to reveal a woollen tunic and trousers dyed a dark blue.

"They don't." Kakashi said. "But seeing a bright orange jumpsuit, a bright red dress, and a shirt with the Uchiha clan symbol printed on the back the three of you clearly need some help. Now get dressed."

"Hey there's nothing wrong with orange!" Naruto said.

Sakura grabbed her set of clothes and made to move back into the school.

"Where do you think you're going Haruno-kōhosei?" Kakashi said.

"Um…. To get changed Hatake-Taisa." She replied.

"The forces have no time to care about your modesty Haruno-kōhosei. You have thirty seconds to get changed. There are only shinobi here." Kakashi said.

The girl flushed the same colour as her hair and snapped her head between the two other boys. They were clearly doing their best not to look in her direction as they themselves got changed. Sakura was getting ready to warn them off from peeking on her when the words died in her throat. Kakashi was staring down at her with his hands held behind his back.

"Twenty seconds Haruno-kōhosei." He said.

In a rush she slipped out of her dress and put on the woollen uniform, keeping her face down and hidden beneath her hair. Her hands were shaking in embarrassment as Kakashi neither turned away or said anything else.

When the three of them were finished they were standing at attention, packs on their backs, and dressed in their new blues. Their trousers were bandaged down just as Kakashi's were but instead of a flak jacket they had been issued a simple dark green canvas harness worn around their torsos. The harness had loops for scrolls, webbing, and attachment points for pouches.

"Good. You are now ready to be briefed on the test." Kakashi said, he himself standing in front of the three. "The test will be conducted over the next seven days. You will have to complete the objective in that time frame or fail."

The Jounin dug his hand into one of his pouches and pulled out a small silver bell.

"You have to retrieve this bell from me." He said.

There was a beat where the three fresh graduates expected the man to continue.

"That's it?" Naruto said.

"That's it." Kakashi nodded. "A few rules though, you can't acquire any more equipment than what you have now, and no one else can help you except for giving you information. Understood?"

Three nods replied.

Kakashi hummed and framed his chin with his fingers.

"There's still something missing." He said. "Like I'm forgetting something."

He snapped his fingers and pulled out another scroll.

"Aha." He said and tossed them each something white and round. "Put those on. I don't want to see any of your faces again even if you pass."

"Holy shit!" Naruto shouted. "These are ANBU masks."

Sasuke was smirking. Sakura though could only twist her lips into something like a frown.

"Um…. Hatake-Taisa… are you sure? I thought only ANBU could wear these things." She said.

"Ah you're right..." He said. "Well put them on for now. I have something in mind"

The three did so, their faces now covered by the blank porcelain. Kakashi meanwhile retrieved a small bottle of ink and matching brush from one of his pouches.

"Now hold still you three." He said.

In a neat text, as if he had practice writing on ANBU masks, Kakashi wrote out a short four-character phrase on each of their masks.

"Alright. That should do it. Now we can start the test." He said while dusting off his hands.

The three Genin took their masks off to see what he had written.

Naruto yelled first.

"What the fuck is Not AN BU Yellow?"

Kakashi had already disappeared in a flurry of leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto turned to his new team.

"So… what does it say on yours?" he said.

"Blue." Sasuke replied.

"I'm pink…" Sakura said.

"Well… it makes sense… sort of." Naruto said.

A long silence passed between the three as each of them tried to formulate some kind of response to what just happened.

"So… are we going to look for this guy?" Naruto asked.

"It'll be nightfall soon. I'm going home." Sasuke said. "You two meet me here tomorrow morning and we'll get those bells."

With that the Uchiha boy turned and walked towards the stairwell.

"Sasuke-kun, I'll come with you!" Sakura said.

Naruto stayed where he stood, his brow furrowed, and staring at the porcelain mask in his hand. It was when the backs of the two others almost disappeared from view that he came to a realisation.

"Uh guys." He said. "Don't you think we should stick together?"

Sasuke stopped and turned, the girl trailing behind him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but chose to scoff instead. Then he kept walking.

"Man he's an asshole." Naruto muttered to himself.

The distance between the academy and Naruto's home was shorter than one would think. Konoha was a city like no other, strung up among the trees. The city was built in five levels, from the forest floor to so high in the canopy one could see the open skies. The Academy itself was built, as was most buildings in the second level and above, abutting two of the enormous trees with the foundations slotting directly into their trunks.

Naruto dropped down a level immediately and landed on one of the main thoroughfares of the city, a wooden suspension bridge that was wide enough for four carts to pass at once. The vines that held it up were thicker than Naruto's torso and tied off to the trees.

It was another short five minutes, the sun having truly sunk now, before Naruto found the particular tree he was looking for. With a practiced ease he jumped onto the bark surface, his hand and foot slick with chakra. Ten seconds of sliding and he landed feet first on the loamy earth of the forest floor right in front of his apartment.

It was just as he was about to walk through the front door of the building that he felt something strike the back of his neck.

* * *

Naruto woke, not with a headache, but with his neck as stiff as granite. He was bound, with wire, and somewhere he didn't recognise.

"Naruto, what the hell is going on!"

He recognised that voice though. He turned his head, as far as it would go, and saw a familiar pink haired face in a similar situation. She was bound to a training post but unlike Naruto she wasn't in uniform. He didn't know whether to laugh or blush seeing the frilly red negligee.

Unlike her nightwear her expression was something Naruto knew well. Her eyes held the stormy indignation of the feminine kind, almost disbelieving that Naruto could be audacious enough to put her in such a situation. It was probably a nightmare to get dirt stains out of the silk.

"Hey Sakura, lovely evening right?" He replied. "Even the Uchiha princess is here."

He pointed his chin at the third training post that held their third member. Sasuke was also tied up but was still asleep or unconscious. He wasn't in uniform either.

"Don't call him that, you idiot." Sakura snapped back.

She would have continued but was interrupted by the sound of clapping. Which direction it was coming from was unclear until a figure stepped into the tiny bit of moonlight that had managed to seep down.

"Congratulations." It was Kakashi. "You guys have set a new record."

The tone was light hearted but there was something too unnatural in how the man had seemingly melted out of the shadows. Naruto could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising with a shiver that crawled over his skin.

"Um… Taisa. I think Sasuke is still asleep." Naruto said.

The man looked at the slumped figure of the boy and without a word his fingers twitched into rapid seals that resulted in a bolt of water slapping the Genin in the face. It woke him up spluttering and eyes wide.

"What – What's going on?" he said.

Kakashi shook his head with an easy smile hidden beneath his face mask. With the headband slanted over his left eye only a quarter of his face was visible, but even that much was enough to know that he was amused.

"And I expected so much from the top of the class Uchiha." Kakashi drawled.

The implication for Naruto slipped right on by as the blonde haired boy was too busy chuckling at the other boy being drenched in water.

"I've never had a team fuck up literally as soon as the exercise began." Kakashi continued.

Sasuke glared, Naruto and Sakura were just confused.

"Splitting up when in pursuit of a superior enemy is a grave tactical mistake." Kakashi said. "A perfect opportunity for the target to pick you off one by one. So in light of that, I win."

There was a split second of wordless confusion before all three of the Genin broke out in protest.

"This is bullshit." Sasuke hissed. "You never said– "

Kakashi lifted one hand for silence and crouched down into squat.

"Here's a lesson for you three." He said. "What was your objective, or in other words your win condition?"

Sasuke was muttering softly and staring into the dirt, his fists clenched behind his back. Sakura looked to him and a soft frown appeared on her face.

"To get the bell from you." Naruto said, seeing as the other two weren't going to answer.

"Correct." Kakashi said "So logically my win condition, at least the one you can be sure of, is to stop you from getting the bell. One of the simplest ways to do that is to kill you. You didn't really expect me to only run and hide did you?"

Naruto tilted his head back to rest on the training post and groaned.

"Also, what was the time frame?" Kakashi continued.

Naruto was about to answer when Kakashi stopped him.

"Not you, I want one of the others to answer." Kakashi said.

Sakura was constantly shifting her view from Sasuke to Kakashi, hemming and hawing, unsure of if she should say anything.

"Seven days." Sasuke eventually spat out.

"Correct." Kakashi said. "Seven days. Seven twenty-four hour periods."

Naruto smacked his head into the training post again.

"I fucking knew it." He said.

Kakashi laughed.

"Yet here you are." The Jounin said. "Well the three of you are fresh cadets so I'll go easy. Try not to waste too much time getting free, the clock is still ticking. Though I will have to deduct ten points from each of you."

"Points?" Naruto asked. "What points?"

Kakashi ignored the question and pressed on.

"Also, the three of you should be in full uniform when on duty." He said. "Don't let me catch like this again."

Kakashi held each of their masks in his hands, one taken from Naruto's pack and the others from wherever the other two had put them away. With one hand held in a half seal he pressed them back onto their faces with a flare of chakra.

"Another tip," Kakashi said. "If you cut up the ration bars small enough they'll fit. Bye bye."

The man melted back into the shadows.

"Well this is shit." Naruto said.

His voice sounded strange to his ears, the mask warping it in some subtle way to make it just a little off.

"You should watch your mouth Naruto." Sakura said.

"Really?" Naruto asked. "That's the first thing you have to say in this situation."

"Shut up the both of you." Sasuke said.

He was squirming in his bonds, trying to loosen it up or find a weak point to exploit.

"You're both equally useless wastes of space." He said.

Naruto only snickered as he watched the other boy struggle. By the way Sasuke was dressed he clearly didn't have any equipment with him and the contrast between the ANBU style mask and the light blue pyjamas was ridiculous.

Naruto casually stood from his spot against the training post, the cut ends of the steel wire trailing off his body. His two teammates looked on with shock though Sasuke hid it beneath a veil of contempt.

"Well it was good hanging out guys." Naruto said. "But I want to sleep in my own bed you know."

"How did you do that?" Sakura asked.

"Well, I have a lot of experience being tied up." Naruto replied.

After a beat he spluttered.

"Not in any weird way of course." He said.

He shook out his limbs that had started to go numb while he was tied up and messaged some of his sorer muscles. His neck was still painfully stiff.

"Naruto~" Sakura called out to him in a sing song voice. "You're not going to leave me tied up all night are you?"

Naruto opened his mouth for an enthusiastic yes but then made the mistake of actually looking at her.

"I know you're going to cut Sasuke loose as soon as I do." Naruto tried to convince himself.

"But Naruto…." Sakura whimpered. "We have to stay together anyway or we'll just get caught out again."

Naruto tried to look away and ignore her but it was a losing battle from the start. He couldn't really deny her logic and her skimpy outfit was devastating to his developing hormones.

"You know I hate how you can do that me." He said and pulled a short hooked knife from one of his sleeves. "And as long as you do you could at least go on a date with me."

Sakura smiled as Naruto cut her loose.

"Not in a million years." She said and then she belted him in the face. "And don't stare at me you pervert."

Naruto pushed himself up from the ground with a hand rubbing his mask and went to free Sasuke as well, muttering under his breath.

"I'm wearing a fucking mask, how the hell would you know if I was staring."

"You both disgust me." was all Sasuke said in thanks.

"Um guys… there's a slight problem." Sakura said and both boys looked over to see her clutching her mask. "These don't come off."

"What do you meant they don't come off!?"

* * *

Three days had elapsed during which the three Genin had never left each other's presence. Sasuke's home, being the largest, had become their home base and with a rotating watch they had managed not to get ambushed in such a way again, even if it was more likely that Kakashi hadn't even tried.

Still, his absence definitely didn't stop him from tormenting them. The masks were essentially impossible to remove without the appropriate technique and none of them knew it. To make it worse it had taken almost a whole day for them to figure out how to even open the tiny slot for food and water.

They hadn't managed to get even an inkling of where the man might be until they had learned his address by eavesdropping on some of the other Jounin. That's where they were now, hidden across the street from a nondescript building on the third level of Konoha.

"So how are we going to do this?" Naruto asked.

His legs were starting to cramp up as he crouched on a tree branch with his two team mates. They had been watching the place for hours and though they had seen Kakashi go in they had yet to see him come out.

"You and Sakura will go in and cover the front door in case he tried to escape while I go in through the window and retrieve the bell." Sasuke said.

"You know this guys an elite Jounin right. He told us day one and you think you can take him alone?" Naruto said. "Whew, I knew you were an arrogant prick but I thought you at least- "

Sasuke pierced him with a scathing glare that was growing in intensity.

"Hey, hey," Sakura spoke up with her up hands in a placating motion. "It's not like Hatake-Taisa will be going all out, If Sasuke surprises him he might just be able to do it."

Naruto sighed and stood straight to make his way to the apartment building.

"Whatever," he said. "Let's get this over with."

Without another word the blonde boy dropped down from the branch and started to move his way into the building. Sakura flashed Sasuke a confused look, the Naruto they knew would have argued until his face went blue, not give in almost without a fight. Sasuke just waved her off and told her to get into position.

A minute later Naruto and Sakura were position on either side of a door on the third floor, at apartment thirty-four. They were just waiting now for Sasuke to make his attempt. Sakura dismissed the tension in Naruto's frame as just nervousness until she heard the sound of breaking glass and Naruto suddenly kicked down the door.

Before she knew what was happening she had followed Naruto into the apartment, revealing a large square room that looked to be a living room. The couch and rug ensemble was littered with shards of glass. The only other person in there, however, was Sasuke.

The two boys looked at the only other obvious door, most likely the bedroom, and turned back to pass some subtle signal between them before they raced to be the first to reach it.

It was almost simultaneously that they kicked it, the staggered blows transferring enough force to throw it off its hinges and into the room beyond. Holding the momentum, they both rushed inside, kunai in hand and ready.

When Sakura moved to follow in after them both boys shouted out to her.

"Don't!"

It was too late, however, and Sakura was already stepping into the room. It was completely bare, not even making a token effort to appear as a bedroom should. The only thing Sakura could see was her two teammates standing stock still and a strange black script flowing down every wall of the room and flowing to meet in the centre of the floor.

"Stop!"

Both boys yelled at her again and with a start she did exactly that and then a second later it struck her. She realised what she was standing in and the thought of it almost made her throw up her breakfast then and there, which would definitely be unpleasant while wearing the mask. It was a landmine seal.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit." Sakura could feel her breathing speed up and start to hitch.

"Sakura calm the hell down!" Naruto said. "If you freak out you'll get us all killed."

"Is he fucking insane!" she shouted right back at him. "This is the middle of the village and his own bloody apartment!"

"Not really, this place isn't mine."

Three heads whipped around to see a familiar head of silver hair in the bedroom window.

Sakura's face was taking on a colour similar to her hair.

"You!" she screamed.

"Yes, me." Kakashi replied with a nod. "Minus ten points for all three of you. Again."

The Genin were dumbfounded, and all except Sasuke had their mouths hanging slack.

"Now who wants to tell me how you guys fucked up. Again." Kakashi continued.

He didn't receive any replies as the three Genin were still speechless. Having an armed explosive under your feet not even acknowledged by someone three feet from you tended to have that effect.

"Yellow? Blue? No?" Kakashi sighed. "Well congrats on messing up on step one as well as day one. The three of you couldn't even gather intelligence right. I actually live on the second floor on the other side of the building. You should always verify intel gathered in the field. Was pretty easy to get those Jounin to help me out you know."

"Um…Hatake-Taisa." Sakura said, her voice trembling. "You're not going to leave us here on this landmine seal are you?"

Kakashi framed his chin with his fingers.

"Hmm…. From the look of it, it should run out of chakra in about fifteen hours. Just hold still until then and you'll be fine." He said

Three faces paled in response.

"Now what else was I going to say…" Kakashi said. "Oh right, I should probably stop actually teaching you things since I'm not officially your instructor yet. Good luck!"

With a puff of smoke, he was gone.

Sakura was green in the face, Naruto was just bewildered, but Sasuke had his brow furrowed in deep thought.

"So Naruto." Sasuke eventually said. "Do you have any tricks to get out of this one?"

Naruto started at Sasuke's tone of voice, namely the lack of sarcasm or scorn.

"Nope!" he replied.

A pouch of kunai hit him in the back of the head.

"Naruto, you idiot, don't say that so cheerfully!" Sakura shouted before she realised what she had done.

There was a flash of pure horror as three Genin watched the weighted pouch fall towards the ground after bouncing off Naruto's head. It landed with a thud and they screwed their eyes shut, certain they were going to die.

The explosion never came.

"Don't throw things in here!" both boys shouted back.


	3. Chapter 3

Naruto stood in a clearing with his two team mates. It was early morning, the dew still thick, and the air heavy with a wet chill. Even the creatures of the forest were barely up, the very beginnings of bird song filtering in through the branches with the coming sunlight. Yet together with the familiar scent of oak and grass there was something else. There was a corpse.

Sakura and Sasuke froze as they watched Naruto squat down and begin poking it with a stick.

"Wow, I mean I knew you'd snap and kill someone one day." Naruto said. "But literally within a week of graduating? Even I'm surprised."

The body had dug a furrow in the turf, tearing up clumps of grass and leaving the toes buried in the soft earth. On the other end, the head, or what was left of it, was lying in a mulched pile at the centre of a corona of blood, brain, and tufts of silver hair. It had been a fantastic kunai shot, hitting the back of the man's skull in mid-air from almost two dozen meters away.

"So, now that we've killed our instructor…. I guess we technically pass?" Naruto said and began rummaging through the various pouches and pockets on the rapidly cooling body in search of the bell.

Sakura could only gape like a fish, her face white tinged green, and her limbs hanging slack by her sides. Sasuke on the other hand remained frozen, as if all higher brain function had ceased and he was in a standing coma.

"I can't believe it…" Sasuke muttered under his breath.

For a moment a wide grin threatened to split his face in half along with a gust of giddiness that would have left him hopping from one foot to the other. It passed quickly though as reality reasserted itself. There was simply no way it could be so easy, even if every fibre in the Uchiha's body wanted to believe it was. If he could kill an elite Jounin, he could kill his brother. It was obvious then that he hadn't killed an elite Jounin.

"Kukushi, no!"

The three cadets whipped their heads around to see Kakashi rushing over to the corpse, again somehow materialising from the shadows.

"You killed Kukushi!" the man groaned.

"What…" Naruto said.

The three of them looked at the corpse, at Kakashi, then back to the corpse. Sakura scrambled behind a nearby bush and began to throw up the contents of her stomach, a stream of vomit pouring out of the small hole in her mask like a running tap.

"You mean that's not you?" Naruto said.

Kakashi looked at him with his eyebrow raised.

"Okay, that was a stupid question." Naruto admitted. "Then who the hell is this guy?"

"He's Kukushi." Kakashi replied.

Naruto and Sasuke waited for the man to elaborate, before they remembered that he never did.

"So… Sasuke just murdered your twin brother?" Naruto said.

Sasuke gulped, his feet slowly tracking towards the edge of the clearing even as his knees almost knocked together. He hadn't considered the man having a brother, he thought there was only one man with that kind of hair in the village.

"Well, just goes to show you the importance of confirming your targets." Kakashi said.

A smile had started to creep up on the man's face. Sasuke stopped as that visage came to rest on him. He had been embroiled in his thoughts, of escaping Kakashi, the village, the irony of becoming a missing-nin at the age of thirteen.

"And not getting caught in genjutsu." Kakashi continued. "Guess that's another twenty points."

For Sasuke, his mind came to a halt as it chewed on those words. Then, like a physical blow, the world came snapping back, as if reality itself had been stretched sideways like a rubber band. When it settled Sasuke found he couldn't move anything below his neck. He screamed.

"Oi, shut the hell up, you'll make me go deaf."

Sasuke turned his head, which he found he could do, and saw a familiar disk of porcelain with the words Not AN BU Yellow printed on its surface.

"Oh…" escaped from his lips.

"Yeah… we're buried up to the neck." Naruto said. "Beats me how he did it though."

"Do you know where we are?" Sasuke asked.

"Nah, but we must be pretty far out, haven't seen or heard anyone at all." Naruto replied. "He must've lured us out here with that genjustsu."

An awkward silence passed between the two. It was already getting dark, another day gone, and the trio were no closer to retrieving the bell. There was no telling how long it would take them to escape from their current predicament either.

"Great, just fucking great." Sasuke snapped. "I grit my teeth and put up with you and the useless bitch and I'm still going to end up fucking enlisted because the instructor is an asshole who gives us an impossible test."

"Hey, you take that back!" Naruto shouted. "We're not the ones on negative two hundred points."

"You're actually keeping track of that?" Sasuke spat back. "Pay attention Naruto, we have one more day to get that bell and your happy go lucky bullshit isn't getting us anywhere."

"Why are you such an ass anyway Sasuke?" Naruto growled. "Seriously, you weren't always such a self-absorbed prick."

The words hung in the air between them as Sasuke's eyes bored into Naruto. Then, if he could have, Sasuke would have slumped his shoulders as he let out a long sigh.

"There's only one thing I want. Anything else doesn't matter." Sasuke said. "So I swear, if you hold me back…"

"Yeah, yeah, and that's why you're a sad sack of shit." Naruto said.

The conversation would have continued but was interrupted by a thick stench wafting over them. The two turned their heads to see the source of the smell. Across from both of them was their last member, buried like they were, but with her head slumped forward in a slowly growing puddle of vomit.

"You don't think she'd drown do you?" Naruto said.

* * *

It was morning on the last day of the test and the three cadets were seated in a ramen bar called Ichiraku's. Of the three of them, only one was making any attempt to eat. Naruto, using all his ingenuity, was slurping up individual noodles and broth with a straw. They still hadn't figured out the trick with the masks.

Sakura was slumped over the table with her hands on her head, trying to squeeze the killer headache out of her skull. She was moaning softly and every now and again would lift her head just slightly and let it drop with a quiet thud of ceramic on wood. Each time she did Sasuke's fists tightened just a little more. They were resting on top of the table, thumbs tucked in and almost dislocating from the force of his fingers wrapped around them. His mask had a deep crack running from his jaw to just above his eyebrow.

"So guys, what's the plan?" Naruto said between slurps.

There was a particularly loud thump from Sakura and a pop of a cracking joint from Sasuke.

"Naruto…" Sakura said. "Why are you in such a good mood?"

Naruto laughed and rubbed the back of his head, the straw in his hand dribbling ramen broth onto his uniform.

"Well… I didn't get hit by the flash bang or the log trap." Naruto said.

Sakura scowled behind her mask. She hadn't even realised but now that she thought about it Naruto had somehow managed to come away unscathed from most of the depredations the Taisa had thought up during the week. It was infuriating actually. Naruto was meant to be the worst of them but he was currently having the best of it.

"And I'm really glad I'm not you right now." Naruto continued. "I mean in the last week you've stepped into almost every trap, not to mention how many times you were throwing up or knocked unconscious. Talk about a shitty week."

Blood rushed to Sakura's face and the only sign of it you could see was her quickly reddening neck. It only got worse when she heard Sasuke grunt in agreement.

"You're such an ass Naruto." She said. "I'm mean sure I haven't been too good but I don't think that's any reason to bring it up and rub my face in it just because you somehow managed to do better."

Her tone had gone from angry to flustered remarkably quick and it left Naruto with a bewildered look. She seemed to have somehow escaped the need to breathe as her rant rapidly continued. Naruto turned his head to Sasuke in search of support only to receive the barest of shrugs.

"But Sakura," Naruto interjected into the middle of her rant. "I was just answering your question."

"And that's the problem you insensitive idiot!" She said.

She was about to continue when Sasuke suddenly shot up from his seat and put his hand on her shoulder. The sudden physical contact from the boy stopped Sakura with her mouth hanging open and she slowly looked up at the boy only to find he was gazing elsewhere.

"Shut the hell up and get on your feet, both of you." Sasuke said. "Kakashi just walked past. We're going to get that bell."

He sprinted out of the ramen bar Sakura in tow. Naruto, however, took a second to pull out his wallet in a panic before throwing a random assortment of coins and bills onto the table and sprinting out himself.

* * *

The seven days had come to an end. Not once had they come close to retrieving the bell. They hadn't even had a glimpse of it once since the first day. They hadn't even managed to physically touch the Jounin at all.

The final mad hours had been a chase through the streets and forests of Konoha, running after the barest flickers of the man's shadows in the branches of the trees. That had been the cruellest thing, giving them a sliver of hope that they might get to attempt taking it from the man, even if it was doomed to failure.

Now the three cadets under Hatake Kakashi were laid out on their backs, heaving for breath, their limbs weighed with fatigue and the mocking smile of their tormentor peering down at them. It had been exactly one hundred and sixty eight hours since the start of the test and as soon as that moment had come to pass the three of them had collapsed. It was a mix of relief and shame. It was finally over but they had failed.

"Well. That was pathetic." Kakashi said.

All Naruto could taste was grit in his mouth. He could feel it between his toes too, and everywhere else. He was coated in dirt, stray twigs, and even a sprinkling of ash from a close call with a fire trap. Sakura had already passed out, the exertion too much for her poor constitution, and Sasuke was trying his best to get on his feet as futile as that was.

"This test was rigged. You never even tested our combat skills. You wanted us to fail." Sasuke managed to say between gasps of air.

Kakashi chuckled as he leaned against a tree. His form was almost languid, not betraying even a hint that he had been leaping through the trees for several hours, not even his clothes betrayed the smallest scuff or stain.

"And I didn't have to. If that's all you're good at you would be better off joining the Daimyo's armies. Ninety percent of a Shinobi's success does not depend on combat skills." Kakashi said.

Naruto twisted his brows in thought and Sasuke managed to roll onto all fours before spitting out a glob of thick mucus tinged with streaks of blood. It was clinging to the edges of the hole in his mask in long strings and after a second of trying to dislodge them Sasuke just wiped it on his sleeve.

"Bullshit." Sasuke retorted. "What good is a shinobi that can't fight?"

"Now, that's not what I said at all." Kakashi replied. "For example, do you know why I'm considered an S-rank shinobi?"

Sasuke looked taken aback and scowled at what seemed to him a patronising question. There wasn't a single Uchiha who hadn't at least heard of this man.

"You're Sharingan Kakashi, known for over a thousand techniques." Sasuke said. "You're one of the most powerful shinobi alive. That's all that matters."

"Wrong." Kakashi said. "My raw combat power is nowhere near S-rank level."

Sasuke threw an acidic look at the Jounin and grimaced.

"A proper shinobi should be able to change a dressing, plan an invasion, forage for food, navigate a ship, design fortifications, write a formal letter, balance an account, draw a seal, set a bone, code, decode, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, co-operate, act alone, solve equations, analyse new problems, saddle a horse, infiltrate a city, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for Tokubetsu Jounin." Kakashi said, chuckling at his own little joke.

Naruto by this point had caught his breath and drained his canteen.

"But that's insane." Naruto said. "Nobody can do all that, in fact I can't think of anyone in Konoha who can, except maybe the Hokage."

Kakashi raised his visible brow.

"Why do you think I'm S-rank?" he said. "I have a perfect mission record, no scrub outs and no KIA's. Not every obstacle can be killed."

Kakashi gave it a moment to sink in.

"And I'll be training you three to that standard which, in my opinion, should be what every shinobi is held to, but that's neither here nor there." Kakashi said.

"But I thought we failed your test?" Naruto said.

"Oh, no, I was just testing your resolve. You three are surprisingly the first not to quit by day five." Kakashi said. "I have no interest in training cadets who'll drop out before I'm finished."

A wide smile broke out on Naruto's face. Even Sasuke couldn't help the sneaking grin. Sakura was still out cold.

"No tricks right?" Naruto asked.

"No tricks," Kakashi replied, "from this point on that would be counter-productive. Instead I expect you three to meet me bright and early tomorrow morning at training ground seventeen. Our schedule will be as follows. From six to ten will be physical conditioning followed by one hour for breakfast. From eleven to two will be classroom instruction followed by one hour for lunch. From three to eight we will be working on practical skills. This will continue for five days of the week. The weekend will be reserved for various live exercises, assessment, or extra training days. Understood?"

Naruto and Sasuke nodded.

"Good," Kakashi said, "Oh, and don't forget Pink here. Fill her in when she wakes up. Team NANBU dismissed."

Then he disappeared in a flurry of leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

The north-western reaches of fire country remained untouched by industry, a three hundred mile stretch of interminably hilly terrain blanketed by uncountable trees. It was a dense, old growth, over a thousand years in age even as the Sage of Six Paths walked among their boughs. It lay across the strategic border with the Land of Grass, a natural barrier from the legions of men that may come marching from the mountains beyond. Konoha's great rival, Iwa, and the Land of Earth had crossed the buffer state of Grass before, finding only a twisting maze, a labyrinth of timber in which they had been divided and conquered, battle after battle.

It was in this terrain that three cadets trudged through the undergrowth, back laden with a four week combat load. Even with a type nine storage scroll it weighed almost twenty kilos. Unfortunately for them it was standard practice to carry all essential equipment and four days of supplies unsealed and on your person. Risking it all to a stray kunai or fire technique was a fool's prerogative but it hadn't stopped Naruto from bemoaning the long list of items he had read in the standard operations manual that Kakashi had given to each of them.

He didn't recall any of this during the march however. Naruto had long let his mind go blank, with no thought other than placing one foot ahead of another as he followed after Sasuke. Sakura brought up the rear, her feet swaddled in bandages inside her boots. The blisters had swallowed almost a third of her feet.

A few minutes later the three cadets came to rest, slumping against the trees, and taking slugs of water from their canteens.

"Oi Blue, the rest period should be ten minutes on the hour." Naruto said.

Sasuke turned his head to glare, which would have been more effective if Naruto could see his eyes.

"You have a problem with the pace I set?" He said.

"Yeah, I'm telling you the rest is too short." Naruto replied.

Sasuke stood, slowly using one arm to push himself upright, until he settled heavily on his feet. Naruto on the other hand had no trouble doing the same, his breath was light and even, and he shifted the weight on his shoulders with a shrug as he stood.

"This is super rough terrain and our window isn't going to close for ages. Ten minutes makes way more sense than five." Naruto continued. "We don't need to be in such a rush."

Sasuke caught the quick glance the blonde gave Sakura and scoffed.

"We're not slowing down. It's five and it's going to stay five." Sasuke said.

"Which I just told you is stupid." Naruto said.

"The Taisa made me Lead on this op. You had your turn so fall in line Yellow." Sasuke scowled.

Both boys squared their shoulders and their chests puffed just the slightest as they sized each other up. There was a twitch in Sasuke's fingers as Naruto clenched one hand in a loose fist.

"Five minutes are up." Sakura cut in. "Let's go."

She stood, even slower than Sasuke had.

"And don't argue with Blue, Yellow." She said. "He is the leader. Get it through your thick skull."

She moved off and didn't give them a choice if they wanted to maintain formation. Naruto pushed past Sasuke, bumping him with his shoulder. They both knew it hadn't been more than three.

Several hours passed before they came upon a gap in the trees. The earth was dead and dust, falling off the bottom of their feet like ash. Nothing grew there. It was a negative a space, a rent in a bolt of cloth, with straight lines demarking its boundaries. At its widest it was only forty meters across yet it stretched off in a long line for several hundred.

Naruto felt something crunch beneath his boot. He dug it out with his toe. It was a bone, or a series of small bones in the shape of a hand. There was the barest hint of what used to be a kunai in its grip, a puddle of twisted rust and a scrap of leather.

"We're here, point Asahi." Sasuke said. "Yellow secure the perimeter, Pink and I will find the dead drop."

Naruto grumbled under his breath as he held his fingers in a seal. Several clones appeared in puffs of smoke and moved off towards the tree-line on each side. With that accomplished he took the time to take in his surroundings. The grey dirt was rippled like sand by the winds yet he could just barely see something sticking out of the ground. He walked over and pulled it free.

It was a spear, bone dry and brittle like a charcoal briquette, and it crumbled just the same as he rolled it in his fingers. It stained his fingers black with soot and fell to the ground in two pieces. He found many other such pieces, weapons and armour torched into uselessness by some great heat, as he wandered through the devastated landscape.

"Stop daydreaming. We secured the package." Sasuke said and tossed a long package towards Naruto.

The cadet received it in both hands, briefly caught off balance by the weight and suddenness of the burden. Sasuke had a similar package slung over his shoulder as did Sakura who was standing beside him. It was almost a meter long and swaddled in thick waxed canvas held together with raw twine. The two were also coated in the grey dirt, staining their uniforms up their sleeves and trouser legs. Without a word they slipped back into the forest.

In the next hour of travel Naruto noticed the rest period had increased to eight minutes. He had smirked under his mask until Sakura had taken off her own to quickly choke down a ration bar. The wide smile she had given the other male on the team twisted something. Naruto chose not to eat.

"We're approaching point Kawase." Sakura said.

Naruto's head snapped up from the monotonous march. The girl had memorised the route they were taking and despite the landscape sliding by in a blur for him, she obviously had noticed some kind of landmark. The last hour of their climb had slowly increased in inclination and now they were approaching the edge of another ridgeline.

Once they reached it they quickly settled into a vantage point over a shallow valley. The outcropping they had settled on top of was quickly covered with a frame of slim branches and netting they had brought with them. A few bushes and leaves completed the camouflage and then they waited.

Below them was a small compound, a ring of five small warehouses and a central two story building that appeared to be a manor of some sort. They were all timber construction in typical Land of Fire style with flat tops and sloped eaves in various colours. The buildings were also hemmed by a crude palisade. Outside the compound was the reason for its existence. Terraces had been cut into the hills and filled with pale white and purple flowers, poppies.

Once the trio had settled into the observation post Sasuke turned to each of them.

"The countersign is Tora-ribbon." He said. "We'll be taking ninety minute shifts during the day, three hours at night. Sakura takes first shift, understood?"

"Understood." Sakura said.

Naruto just nodded with grit teeth before sending a squad of clones to the rear of the ridge to secure their exit and perimeter.

It was two hours later, during Naruto's observation shift, that he saw it through the eyeglass, a figure standing in the courtyard of the compound. It was dressed in yellow and green silks, the colours of Iwa.

"Show time guys." He said.

His two team mates immediately broke into action as Naruto did as well. The three of them retrieved the packages from the side of the post and began to free the contents. They pulled out several long pieces of shaped wood, steel, thick pins and rolls of leather. In the next thirty seconds they quickly assembled the pieces, slotting them together and slapping in the pins to secure them. It was a crossbow almost as large as Sakura was.

Continuing the flurry of activity the boys drew the bow with a pull lever and then Sasuke shouldered the weapon with the front stabilised on a flat stone as his eyes shifted from black to red. Sakura at the same time pulled a canvas map, a compass, and an abacus from her pack. Naruto then passed the eyeglass to her and unfurled the leather roll. Inside it were several long bolts tipped in steel with each bolt weighing almost half a kilo.

Sakura's glanced down at the map and compass before returning her eye to the eyeglass even as her fingers continued to dance across the abacus, shifting beads up and down.

"In the courtyard, single target, stationary, green yukata, distance eight hundred, adjust up six, adjust left one half." She said.

Naruto loaded a bolt into the groove. Behind the simple sight Sasuke's eye began to spin madly as he made minute adjustments to the angle of the crossbow. He could make out the red clothed figure with an unnatural clarity as chakra surged along his optical nerves and supercharged his perceptive abilities. Only a split second after Naruto had finished loading, his finger depressed the trigger.

There was a whip crack as the tightly wound steel of the crossbow string surged forwards at speed, propelling the mass of the bolt almost too quick to be seen with the naked eye. Sasuke, however, saw it all, even how the bolt almost seemed to slither through the air like a snake as the forces imparted on it warped the dense wood. He knew it then, that it would hit.

He hadn't told either of his team mates exactly what Kakashi had done to force his Sharingan to express. The bloodline was an old one and well understood, his ancestors having had hundreds of years of research and observation, yet it wasn't secrecy that held his tongue. There were simply some things that beared no repeating. Still, it was impossible to deny its utility and versatility. He didn't regret it at all.

"Shot out." He said.

A few seconds elapsed before the reply he knew was coming came.

"Good shot. Target down." Sakura completed the sequence.

"The Sharingan is fucking bullshit." Naruto muttered.

If he had seen Sasuke's shit eating grin he would have said more.

* * *

The three Not ANBUs were seated in the courtyard of the compound, resting back against their packs as they relaxed for the first time in almost two days. They were spent. Their extraction route had been almost as long as their insertion and the packs hadn't gotten any lighter. After a quick detour to the ash field to depose of the crossbow they had made their way in a meandering path that had ultimately led back to the compound.

Kakashi smiled at the three of them. The location was in fact one of many of Konoha's external training areas, the poppies completely legal and under Konoha's ownership as raw materials for making combat analgesics.

"Congratulations on completing the exercise." He said. "I myself often used this method of assassination during my early teens, came up with it in fact. It's uniquely suited for Sharingan users for assassinating targets guarded by sensors. Avoiding a disadvantage due to your smaller size is just a bonus."

The three cadets had their masks off and were inhaling the boxed lunches Kakashi had provided them and even so the three of them sat a little straighter at those words.

"Unfortunately if I had done it to the standard you three just demonstrated I would probably be in a shallow grave somewhere in the Land of Rivers." Kakashi continued. "I expected better from you Blue."

The cadets stopped eating. Sasuke frowned and stared into his lunch and Naruto chuckled even as Sakura shot him a venomous glare.

"We didn't use a single drop of chakra, we made all the operational windows, and the target was eliminated." Sasuke said. "Where exactly did I mess up?.. Taisa"

"Ah, the devil is in the details as they say." Kakashi replied.

The man pulled out a small notebook and quickly read through a couple pages before nodding to himself. He cleared his throat.

"First, the sixty kilometre insertion took you fifteen hours. That's barely adequate. Yes you made the window but I was generous with those. In the field will never be so neat. ANBU would be expected to cover this distance in ten hours or less." Kakashi said.

At this Sasuke glanced at Naruto and Sakura before the muscles in jaw visibly clenched. In contrast Naruto's grin only grew larger as did Sakura's discomfort.

"But were not ANBU Hatake-Taisa." Sakura muttered.

"I know." Kakashi replied. "I named you guys."

The three cadets were speechless.

"Second and especially embarrassing for you, Pink was unconsciously softening her footfalls with minute amounts of chakra due to her injury. If this had been a real mission the Jounin level sensor would have seen you coming within three kilometres, which defeats the purpose of this exercise." Kakashi continued without missing a beat.

Sakura wilted on the spot, hiding her face beneath her hair as she stared at her feet. Only Naruto who was sitting closer to her could hear the muttering of curses under her breath. Sasuke snapped the chopsticks in his hand.

"Third, when you arrived at your vantage point you assigned Pink first shift. This was a mistake. Either you or Yellow should have taken first shift while Pink and the other unoccupied member performed further treatment on her feet." Kakashi said. "Fourth your countersign was inappropriate. Anyone who has spent time in Konoha would know that Tora is identified by a ribbon. If there is even the slightest chance a password can be guessed from the challenge it's not good enough. Fifth, you failed to confirm the target was dead or take a follow up shot otherwise."

Sasuke jumped up as he heard the last criticism and threw the broken bits of wood in his hand to the ground.

"We hit him." Sasuke said. "I know we did."

Kakashi just chuckled like he found the boy's tantrum amusing.

"Yet you are the student and I am the master." Kakashi said.

He then unsealed an object from a scroll, the dissipating smoke revealing a burlap mannequin stuffed with straw. It was wearing a green yukata and was missing its left leg from the mid-thigh down.

"True, dismemberment is usually a death sentence from rapid blood loss and shock. However, I recall the intelligence briefing on this particular mission being uncharacteristically helpful and accurate. They had a Chūnin medic on the squad as well as a sensor. It might be a gruesome and debilitating wound but it's not a complex one. There was a good chance they would have saved his life." Kakashi said. "So pay attention."

Sasuke crashed back onto the ground.

"Half those things weren't even my fault." He spat. "If I didn't have these dead weights-"

He stopped mid-sentence and swallowed heavily. Kakashi was piercing him with his one eye. It was accusative and hard as iron. The rest of the man's face was just as impassive as if it were waiting for some kind trigger, for Sasuke to cross a line. Even so the Jounin never resorted to using any techniques such as killing intent, he didn't need to. The boy wisely shut his mouth and stopped speaking.

"The team leader takes responsibility for his entire team. That's non-negotiable. Don't try to deflect with poor excuses." Kakashi said. "If you had been attentive Pink wouldn't have had those blisters at all."

He furnished the Uchiha with a final warning glance and addressed all three of them.

"As with every exercise I will be expecting a report from each of you within three days just as I will provide you with individual feedback." He said. "Also, Sakura will be in charge of the next exercise. Team NANBU dismissed."


	5. Chapter 5

The early spring was no warmer for Konoha. The snow held in the branches of its trees sat thick, like a crust, holding the warmth of the sun at bay. It took weeks to melt and when it did it fell on the city as a freezing rain. Every surface became encrusted in a layer of ice, like the teeth on the eaves and the gleaming sheets on the windows. Unlike anywhere else, the forests of Konoha felt the sting of winter far harsher once it had already left.

Sakura woke on the floor of her room at five in the morning. She hadn't slept in her bed in weeks. It was too soft, too pink. At first her parents had told her, then they had tried ordering her, they had even attempted moving her to the bed once she had fallen asleep. It never worked, her body simply refused to sleep on the mushy springs that gave in every way. Eventually they had given up and laid out a futon. It was from there that Sakura stared up at the ceiling, drinking in the details of faux chandelier and the posts of her unused bed. It was a day off.

Before, with the weather outside as it was, she would have been content to stay in bed, wrapped in her sheets. Yet now in her waking hour there was always a discomfort, like an invisible pea, that dug into her. It was as if the walls, papered with a flower motif, were suffocating her in that room. She got up and got ready.

Once she was outside Sakura pulled her muffler down and let the biting chill kiss her face. There was a plaster on her left cheek, to match with the stark white bandages hidden on her left leg by her pants. She had put on the cold weather fatigues without thought in the morning, walking out the door in the trance of routine, swaddled in the pale grey and blue uniform. She had brought her mask too, even though she had realised she didn't need it.

By the time she came to the small café on the third floor of a narrow building on the fourth level her plain cloak had long gone stiff. Even shaking what ice she could from it would leave it far from dry once she entered the warm building, so she left it hanging with the others on the balcony next to one in a royal purple trimmed with grey fur.

The first time she had come to a shinobi only establishment had been a day after she had learned the tree climbing exercise. It was a simple enough trick, using chakra to adhere your body to whatever surface. It had been that day because many places that catered to shinobi had no other way to enter them, no stairs, ladders, or other normal methods of ingress. It was a simple method that kept civilians out of many places, not just cafes or bars.

"Forehead, over here!"

Sakura turned her head to see someone familiar, a blonde with a heart shaped face and green eyes. The girl was nursing a hot tea, heavily spiced enough to be smelt from where Sakura was standing. Her mind quickly supplied that it was saffron, useful to reduce cramping and increase blood flow and also worth its weight in gold, an expensive drink.

"Hey Ino." Sakura replied and took a seat at Ino's signal. "How's your new team?"

The girl was the Yamanaka heiress, a fellow cadet in the Nitodai program, and a classmate from the academy.

"That's what I should be asking you. I mean you're lucky enough to be on a team with Sasuke." Ino said. "I want to know everything, especially about your bumbling. I mean it's been months and you're still not with him? If it was me-"

Sakura slowly began to tune out the blondes words. Instead she saw the perfect neatness of Ino's nails, her hair combed with lavish attention, and the flattering cut of her purple dress. Sakura, in contrast, felt like a lump of gristle. Her nails were chipped and cracked, worn down to the beds. Her hair was wrangled into a tight bun, barely tamed, and her body was smothered beneath the utilitarian lines of combat dress.

"I mean you do look like hell." Ino said. "If you had any pride as a woman forehead you wouldn't be out and about looking like that."

"I know." Sakura replied.

They were the first words she had said in minutes. They came out heavy, falling off the tip of her tongue like stones off a cliff.

"I know." Sakura said. "I know and I hate it."

The other girl had her cup raised and it stayed there as she peered over it at her year mate.

"Well it doesn't look like you're really trying." Ino said.

It was then that Sakura realised her bone deep weariness. The kind that wouldn't let her sit still even as it weighed her down. She couldn't recall the last time she had had a day off.

"I don't need this." Sakura replied.

She stood suddenly, pushing the chair back with a screech, and turned to leave. In her wake was a confused blonde, her cup still frozen half way to her lips.

* * *

On the other side of Konoha, on the fifth level, was the Hokage's office. The man himself was currently mired in paperwork. Every three months he would receive general reports from every department of the military arm as well as on his holdings. Like any other lord in the Daimyo's service the Hokage pledged fealty in return for legitimacy and ownership over for his lands as a part of the Daimyo's domain. These lands were his responsibility to manage and police, and in turn would sustain and provide profit for him. A yearly tithe was also involved, paid to the Daimyo in goods, cash, or military service. It was obvious which of these the Daimyo drew from Konoha. In return the Daimyo could be petitioned for support or arbitration if needed.

As a province and its capital, Konoha was unique in several ways. First of all its defence and administration was almost solely run by shinobi. It was also the most militarised territory in the Land of Fire and the only non-hereditary seat of authority. The Hokage were chosen, not born, which was something Sarutobi Hiruzen was cursing immensely. No matter how many reforms and institutions he created, there would always be these times of year where his fingers were stained with ink and his eyes heavy from lack of sleep. His patience was running quite thin.

"Sanada-dono, you must realise that nothing will change my mind on this issue." Hiruzen said.

The man he was addressing had been bothering him almost every day without fail for the last week. The corpulent ball of fat was Sanada Masayuki, a Fire lord with a fair sized territory on the eastern coast.

"But I am offering you a five year contract at sixty thousand koku of rice per annum." He said. "I don't see the reason for your hesitation Sarutobi-dono."

Sixty thousand koku for a division was an excellent offer. The bulk of Konoha's income actually came in the form of these long term, bulk contracts with various lords who were always feuding and warring with each other during the campaign seasons. As long as the Daimyo got his due he didn't much care for who gave it to him unless it threatened his nation as a whole.

The Hokage sighed internally, covering it with a long draw from his pipe. The way the man's jowls moved when affronted was quite a sight, something you would have never seen on the lords of the Hokage's prime. Hiruzen rubbed his eyes and chastised himself. Nostalgia had become an all too common past time.

"Please do not be so disingenuous Sanada-dono. I am honoured that you have come in person to negotiate this matter but it is simply the case that we cannot offer you the services of my shinobi. It is quite well known that you are preparing for war with your neighbour and we are still in the final year of our contract with its lord, Kato Kiyomasa." Hiruzen said.

"Now, that is preposterous. Utter drivel spread by peasants with too little to fill their uncultured skulls." Masayuki said. "I am simply concerned with the security of my ports. It is well known the Land of Water is in dire straits, and that means pirate scum teeming over the eastern sea."

"Oh?" Hiruzen said. "Then it would be a co-incidence that the price of rice and good iron has risen so sharply in your domain yet timber has not."

Masayuki was taken aback with no easy excuses. He was cornered, well and truly, by nothing more than the words of a few travelling merchants. The Hokage had gathered that intelligence himself the last time he had been by the market district for lunch.

"Like I said, I do not have the patience for games and even still if you are not careful Sanada-dono you will incur the Daimyo's ire. It is one thing for you to take back ancestral lands but if you cast your eyes too far one might think that that too had been a simple pretence. He will not tolerate instability so close to our border with the Land of Hot Springs."

The shade of the man's face had slowly grown to a deep red, his jowls jiggling about in suppressed rage. His pudgy little fists were also balled up on top of the desk.

"Well I see that slime sucking bastard Kiyomasa has you well in his pocket Hokage-dono." The man spat and stood.

"How unbecoming of you Sanada-dono, perhaps you should show yourself out." Hiruzen replied with a cool gaze. "After all we wouldn't want to leave the negotiation table with any regrets.

Once the lord had vacated his office Hiruzen leaned back in his chair as he finished the last of his pipe. The portraits of the previous Hokage stared back at him from the wall and seeing his own face lined so much more heavily than any of theirs made him feel even more acutely the length of his life.

"Bring me Hatake."

* * *

Naruto was just about ready to slam his head into his desk. He was trapped in a makeshift classroom in his own home. There was no escaping it. The first time they had convened there Naruto hadn't thought much of it but it turned out to be a permanent arrangement. When pressed Kakashi had simply told him that it was the easiest place for all of them to meet being roughly central in the city. Naruto didn't buy it but the grin the older man had given him showed he wasn't expected to.

On this day both he and his male teammate had been held back for supplementary classes. Supplementary classes, the very words made him die a little inside. Sakura had been excused as she had learned the material the first time. Now it was just the three of them and a giant chalkboard that Naruto wasn't sure how Kakashi had managed to get into his apartment. None of the doors or windows were large enough.

"Hatake-Taisa… this is so boring" he moaned. "I mean you have like, a thousand techniques, why can't you teach us one of those?"

Sasuke was grimacing as well looking at the chalkboard thick with writing. It was a summary of three major merchant houses that governed ore trade through the Land of Wind as well as their major routes. He grunted, which was about as much as he could bring himself to agree with his team mate.

"Theoretical learning is just as important as practical Yellow." Kakashi said.

This earned a soft scoff from Sasuke which caused Kakashi to look at him dryly. The boy still couldn't meet his eye. It was a weak kind of rebellion, one which Kakashi could easily ignore. There were more lasting ways to correct that kind of behaviour than a simple tongue lashing.

"Well, why don't we take a break to do a quick mental exercise? I will provide you with a tactical situation, and you will tell me your response. Blue is up first."

The two boys straightened up in their seats. Anything was better than the dry material they had been covering earlier.

"You have tracked down infamous missing-nin Itachi Uchiha to a minor lord's manor in the Land of Iron where he is staying as a guest." Kakashi said.

This had an immediate response from Sasuke. The boy went rigid in his seat. Even though he tried to appear nonchalant the tension in the hands held beneath his chin betrayed something simmering beneath the surface.

"You discovered his trail during an exfiltration from an undercover intelligence operation and now sense his chakra signature coming from one of the rooms in the east wing." Kakashi said. "The manor's layout is typical of mid-century Iron architecture and is at the confluence of the Jinzu and Joganji rivers. What do you do?"

Sasuke stared at his instructor with his eyes half lidded, glaring, as if accusing to man of telling a joke in bad taste but as the silence wore on he realised Kakashi was serious and not just trying to cause a reaction.

"I would wait until nightfall before entering through the window. Once inside the room I would find him while he sleeps and kill him." He said.

"Wrong," Kakashi replied "on so many levels. He could kill you in his sleep, but let's say for the sake of argument he can't and you make it inside. Turns out the signature you were feeling was just a lump of chakra metal he had charged with his chakra before leaving. The reason being its whole surface is inscribed with explosive seals. He triggers it when he sees you enter the room. You are now dead."

Sasuke shot to his feet and slammed his hands on his desk.

"That's ridiculous-" he said before being cut off.

"Because you were unaware chakra metal could be used in such a way?" Kakashi said. "Or because you failed to realise the stupidity in risking an open fight with a missing-nin when returning to Konoha with sensitive material? Or because this particular manor is in Awa province and thus belongs to Daimyo of Iron himself? Or perhaps it's because a manor of mid-century Iron has only an armoury in its east wing where a guest would never be allowed let alone sleep?

Sasuke reluctantly returned to his seat, his jaw tight enough to hear the grinding.

"Your continued stubborn refusal to realise how far beneath the standards of your brother you are is tiring. You are yet still a naïve, inexperienced, undertrained cadet." Kakashi said. "You will never kill him as long as you keep this up."

Sasuke had stormed out of Naruto's apartment before Kakashi had even finished speaking.

"So… I guess the lessons over?" Naruto said.


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi was seated across from the Hokage, waiting patiently as the man filled his pipe. The stark light glaring through the windows at the Hokage's back drew a silhouette over the man, shadowing all but the lines of his robe of office. It was a deliberate effect, one that left whoever was seated across from him feeling small and under scrutiny.

"So," The Hokage began. "How is your team progressing Kakashi?"

"Well, Hokage-sama." Kakashi replied. "I do have some minor concerns, in particular with Blue-"

"Sasuke." Hiruzen cut in.

"Excuse me?" Kakashi said.

"Use their names Kakashi." Hiruzen said. "That's why they have them."

Kakashi remained silent which drew a long sigh from the older man.

"You can't hold them at arms-length forever. Not to say I'm not somewhat amused by your sentimentality. Not ANBU, quite the moniker." The Hokage snorted.

"Of course Hokage-sama." Kakashi said.

There was another long silence.

"I see that in four months you have yet to take a single mission." Hiruzen said. "Is there an explanation for this?"

Kakashi weighed his words, unsure of how much detail the Hokage wanted.

"I don't believe they're ready." Kakashi replied.

"And what exactly are they not ready for my boy, the fourth shinobi world war?" Hiruzen said with a wry smile. "There is little to commend a team that has yet to bring in a single ryo for the village yet has drawn almost triple the supplies from requisitions as any other team."

"If I may Hokage-sama." Kakashi said. "I believe the Nitodai program to be a valuable one."

Hiruzen nodded for the Taisa to continue. There were not many who had the courage to broach subjects like this one with the Hokage. Kakashi had earned that right.

"However over its history it has slowly become a tool. A tool for the rich and politically important to send their sons and daughters for a token service, where they remain in some safe posting for several years before exiting the forces to join the political arena. It's become a badge, bought and sold like some trinket. I hold myself to a higher standard."

The Hokage chuckled.

"I am aware." He said. "But I see little harm in it. If we restricted the corpus of officers to your exacting standards Kakashi we wouldn't have half our current numbers. As always, truly promising candidates will quickly move on to further training."

"And I am simply cutting out that extra step." Kakashi replied.

"Very well." The Hokage said. "However I do need my best Jounin to be somewhat productive."

The elder produced a scroll from the top drawer of his desk.

"A B5-rank." Hiruzen said. "Considering the intensity of the training you've given your students I assume this will be no problem."

There was only a split second of hesitation from the Jounin.

"Of course Hokage-sama." Kakashi said.

* * *

The three cadets of Team NANBU were standing at attention, backs ramrod straight, as they saw Kakashi walk into their training ground. They had been informed by a message runner that the Taisa wanted them to convene at their usual spot. Even with it being Sakura's day off and Sasuke having run off during the beginning of their afternoon classes each of them had wandered in early and had been waiting for some time. Only Naruto knew that Kakashi had been called by the Hokage.

"At ease." Kakashi said.

The three shifted simultaneously, holding their hands in the small of their backs and widening their stance.

"Hatake-Taisa." Sakura said.

"Yes Pink?" Kakashi said.

The girl pulled a scroll from her waist pouch and passed it to Kakashi. On the top edge the characters 74-Ka were stencilled onto the paper.

"Are you tendering your resignation Pink-Kōhosei?" Kakashi asked as soon as he saw it.

There was a long pause as Sakura dug at the ground with her toe. That didn't escape Kakashi.

"Yes sir." Sakura said.

She had barely kept the quiver out of her voice, and even then she had looked away from the man. She now wished the mask hanging on her belt was on her face instead.

The scroll went up in a burst of flame and floated away as ash.

"Denied Kōhosei." Kakashi said. "Pursuant to article two oh six subsection two, on notice of resignation during combat operations."

The three cadet's eyes widened in response.

"As of fourteen hundred Team NANBU has been engaged in a B5-rank mission so named Operation Timber Fall. Assemble at staging area seven at sixteen hundred hours with a four-week assault load. Dismissed. You stay behind Pink."

The two male cadets quickly fled from the field leaving Kakashi standing alone with Sakura to watch their retreating backs.

"Bad timing." Kakashi said. "This is a volunteer force. If you don't want to be here it's better you're not."

Sakura managed to squeeze out a nod but kept her shoulders square. Kakashi had yet to turn to her despite ordering her to stay behind.

"Fill out the form again when we return from the mission. I would like to say that it would be better to transfer to another branch than for you to resign. Medical or Admin could use you." Kakashi said and left without ever having looked her in the eyes.

"Better for who Taisa?" Sakura muttered.

At exactly fourteen hundred the three cadets were once again standing at attention as Kakashi gave them a once over. They were in a paved square behind gate seven, also known as staging area seven. It was one of sixteen gates leading out from the walls. Unlike what one would first assume these walls weren't the work of stone masons, rather they were a thick lattice of interwoven trees that the Shodai, the first Hokage, had wrought with his own two hands and prodigious use of chakra. The trunks were knitted together in a way that could not be natural and still thrummed with the man's energy. Almost a hundred meters thick and towering as high above the canopy. Not once since their inception had they ever been breached.

"We will move out in staggered column with rotations every two hours." Kakashi said. "Further briefing will be given once we have closed in on the area of operations. Understood?"

The three cadets voiced the affirmative.

"Good. Move out." Kakashi said.

They had been on the road for several hours when Naruto finally found himself next along in the column to Sakura. The distance between them was almost too far for normal conversation but Naruto persisted.

"Are you really quitting Sakura?" Naruto said.

She was facing away from him but Naruto winced when he saw her shoulders tense up.

"Call me Pink when on mission, you idiot." Sakura said.

Naruto just bulled on ahead, completely ignoring the insult. Sasuke, who was second in the column behind Kakashi only spared a quick glance backwards.

"But you can't!" he said. "I mean you were the top female graduate, there's no way that's true right? Who's going to back me up when I'm Hokage?"

Sakura scowled under her mask.

"Don't you pay attention to anything?" she spat back. "I didn't sign up for this… this!"

"Then what the hell did you sign up for?" Naruto asked. "I mean sure you had a crush on the bastard but I haven't heard you say a thing about him in weeks!"

Sakura readjusted the position of her pack and turned her sightline back to her assigned sector.

"Hey are you ignoring me?" Naruto asked.

He fell silent when he realised there was no answer coming. When they rotated again Sakura volunteered to stay in the rear, as far away from Naruto as she could get.

* * *

Team NANBU took no longer than three days to reach their destination, Kakashi holding them to an operational pace more suited to a combat deployment despite not being in combat. The Land of Fire's road networks were second to none, however, and on the straight paved passages a shinobi could make impressive time in crossing the country. Tanzakugawa was almost two hundred and eighty kilometres from Konoha and they made it easily.

Naruto was currently hidden in the muck of a shallow river, body weighed down with dyed cotton webbing festooned with weeds and debris from the river banks. A good majority of the province was dominated by an enormous river delta, the outlet for almost six different rivers that flowed down from the mountains of the Land of Lighting. It was prime rice farming country but also an interminably flat plane of waterlogged dirt.

He was waiting for a signal as he swept his eyes along the river bank. There were three sentries posted there, a few dozen meters from a low wooden palisade. Each of the three would rotate between six different checkpoints, small elevated platforms by the bank, in fifteen minute increments. Naruto had already been waiting for an hour. The smell was getting to him. The whole place stunk of rotting plants and some sickly sweet smell given off by the weeds. They were bulbous and sticky with sap that Naruto knew would be a pain to wash out later.

Then he heard it, three clicks lost in the buzzing of insects in the dusk.

As soon as the sound registered in his mind Naruto rose out from the muck, blending into the long shadows cast by the thick weeds. He approached the raised platform where the guard was idly staring out at the water, a finger up one of his nostrils. Before the man knew it he was falling back into the water, his shout halfway to his throat before he was dragged under the surface. The water rushed into his mouth, stifling his cry, even as he twisted his elbows back to strike whatever had grabbed him. It was futile in the end. The sharp edge of a kunai was drawn across his throat rasping against his cervical vertebrae. His last words left him as a stream of bubbles from the gash in his neck. At the same moment his two fellow sentries had also been dragged under the water, not to be found until two days later.

Naruto quickly deposited several handfuls of stones into the sentry's pockets, weighing the corpse down in the water. He then removed the webbing that shrouded his body and crept his way further up the river bank.

He met up with two others wearing white porcelain masks, dulled with mud, and nodded to each of them but passed no words. Sakura's hands were shaking, but she kept her head up and stared at her two team mates, as if daring them to say something. Naruto shook his head and pointed at the water before rubbing his upper arms and faking a shiver. The water was cold after all.

Whatever happened between them got left behind when they put on the masks. That was the Taisa's rule. One of many, and they all got followed.

It took them three minutes to cover the short distance to the wall. They had to take it slow, hiding themselves in the slightest divots in the ground and what shrubbery hadn't been cleared. The sun was getting lower and casting longer shadows but once it fell completely there would be a change in shifts and the missing sentries would be noticed.

There were another three clicks and the trio halted at the base of the wall, close enough that no one on along the top would spot them unless they leaned right over the edge. They only paused for a moment, however, as the air was soon pierced by the barest whispers of something in flight. Three more clicks.

They scrambled up the wall, adhering to it with chakra, and rolled over the top, coming to a stop in a crouch. Naruto landed next to another corpse, it's eye mulched by a fletched wooden shaft that protruded from it like a lone sapling. They were in.

The inside of the compound contained five main buildings. A central baily with squat warehouses built on stilts to keep the contents away from moisture laid out in rows in front of it. Other smaller structures such as living quarters, armouries and outhouses filled in the spaces between them. It was a supply dump close to the border with the neighbouring province.

They split up and leapt down from the wall, each of them heading in a different direction. Naruto pulled a package out from one of his pouches and carefully unfolded the waxed wrapping to reveal a wad of explosive notes. He placed one on every wall he passed but there was a particular place he was heading towards, the main barracks. He had left a trail of almost twenty notes by the time he made it to the building. It wasn't much, more a long house than any kind of fortified structure. It was roughly twenty meters long with a door at each end and windows spaced along the side. It was an economical design, one used often for less important or permanent sites such as this one.

Naruto strode out into the open and kicked down the door before tossing five black disks into the single room. There was a central walkway down the centre of the barracks that was just tamped down dirt. The soldiers slept on a timber platform that ran down the length on each side. Many of them had been awake when Naruto had kicked down the door and by the time they reacted, leaping up to grab their weapons and their armour it was too late. Naruto had already slammed the door shut and moved on.

What he left behind, however, were those black disks. They came to a rest, almost evenly spaced, one for every three or four meters. One of the soldiers picked one up, scratching his head as he turned it over in his hand trying to read the scribbles all over the metal. It was roughly the size of a playing card and the edges of the disk were rounded, like balls had been glued to the sides. The others were still scrambling to get armed and one was even about to reach the door when a jet of fire blew out from the bottom of the disk, engulfing the man's limb in a wash of heat that crisped his skin. He started screaming.

The other disks still on the floor jumped up off the ground to about chest high on an average man, levitating in the air on gouts of flame. Then they exploded. A storm of red hot shrapnel came bursting from each of the disks. The rounded edges flying apart from the disk outwards like a blossoming flower and spraying its deadly cargo at chest height. It punched holes into the men in the room, gouts of blood bursting from their chests as they were torn apart. Those who didn't die were left deafened, concussed, and in no state to fight.


	7. Chapter 7

Naruto had only moved a few meters from the barracks when he reflexively ducked as the whine-crack of passing shrapnel snapped past his head. He winced when he spotted an iron ball imbedded in the timber of the next building over. He noted to reduce the chakra charge in the next batch. It would have been an awkward getting hit by his own bombs.

He ducked around the corner from the barracks he had just eviscerated and began planting metal spikes into the earth. They were roughly five centimetres long and less than one wide and in truth were actually hollow. A tightly rolled explosive note was placed inside of them which could be triggered remotely. Best of all they were extremely quick to bury, seeing as you could throw one into the dirt and then stomp on it as you kept on running. Of course, you had to remember to pass chakra out the bottom of your foot to activate them as you did. He left a short trail of them on the street before hopping up onto and adjacent roof to wait.

To the garrison commander's discredit, it was over a minute or so before Naruto saw the first response. A double column of twenty men led by an officer came at double time down the street. They had come from the guardhouse by the main gate which, unfortunately for them, was all too predictable. By the time they were approaching the corner, they were already dead.

Naruto drew out the metal cylinder tied around his neck. He counted down until they were in perfect position and with particular glee sent a burst of chakra into the seal inscribed on its surface. It was a remote detonation seal keyed to the tags he had planted. The ground erupted.

They were only small tags, but that was little comfort to the twenty one men. They went collapsing into the ground as some of them lost their legs to a geyser of dirt, or found their fellow's shin bone protruding from their guts. Naruto only took a second to confirm his handwork and turned to slide down the opposite side of the building he was perched on.

The alarm bells were truly ringing now, whatever sentries that manned them finally realising they were under attack. Naruto could imagine what was left of them scrambling to get their wits together. Too bad most of them were already dead. Naruto, in contrast, was having a great time. His first mission ever in his official capacity as a shinobi of Konoha and it was a B5-rank issued by the Hokage himself. True, that was the lowest B-rank available but a B-rank nonetheless and it was rare to receive a mission directly from the Hokage. He could feel his training paying off and it was glorious. One step closer to his dream and making his grandfather proud.

It was when he had hopped up onto the next row of buildings that Naruto almost laughed out loud. He had spotted a soldier staggering out of the outhouse beneath him with his pants only halfway pulled up to his waist, and who, in his rush to wipe, had left a long trail of toilet paper still stuck to his ass.

Naruto leapt down with a kunai held high above his head, point down, and fell upon the soldier. The tip of the weapon bit into the man's flesh before any other part of Naruto hit him and all that concentrated momentum resulted in the blade cleaving the man's clavicle in two. It wasn't until the tip had sliced into the aortic arch of the man's heart that Naruto's fist came to a stop on his shoulder. They both tumbled to the ground and Naruto cursed as he felt the blade being wrenched from his grip. The kunai fell to the ground in a spray of arterial blood that left the young boy covered in the stuff.

"Goddamn it." Naruto muttered to himself.

He retrieved the kunai off the ground and gave his ankle an experimental turn. He hissed and hopped up onto one foot before slowly lowering it to the ground. He knew that if Kakashi found out that he had injured himself trying to go for a flashy kill the man would be pissed. Naruto started hobbling towards the nearest bit of cover and hoped it would heal up enough in the next few minutes. He had a lot more noise to make before he was done.

* * *

Sakura had been waiting under the closest of the five warehouses, her deep blue uniform blending into the shadows, when she heard the first crumps of detonation go off. There was something slightly worrying in the glee her blonde teammate took with explosives. It had been a hell of a week when Kakashi-Taisa had first introduced them to the dozens of different devices that all blew up in some specific way. There were some very sadistically creative people over in Research and Development.

From where Sakura was currently laying prone she could see the feet of the two guards who were posted to the entrance to the warehouse. They wore woven straw sandals like all the other low ranked soldiers and so she knew it would be time soon when she spotted a much nicer pair, made from leather and strips of metal, approach them. She heard some indistinct shouting before all three sets of feet scrambled off towards the source of the noise.

She pulled herself out from under the warehouse and entered through the now unguarded door. The interior held dozens of pallets stacked to the ceiling with sacks. There was rice, millet, beans, and other sorts of dry rations. She estimated from the dimensions of the place that there could be as much as two hundred tons in that one warehouse alone. She made a mental note of the contents before she set about her work, placing incendiary tags between the pallets as she moved through the room.

It was when she came to the last few stacks that she almost yelped in surprise. Turning the corner she had spotted a man sleeping behind a small stack of sacks. He stunk of cheap sake and had what looked like a lock of hair clutched in his hand.

Sakura approached him with a kunai drawn from her holster. She took measured steps, keeping her footfalls as soft as possible, as she watched his chest rise and fall. It was a young man, perhaps only a few years older than her. His cheeks still had that boyish softness that didn't quite fade until a man was twenty or older, and there was only the barest hint of hair growing on his chin. He was short, his hands were rough beyond his age, and he had the sure signs of starvation at sometime in his youth. A peasant conscript, only here because his lord demanded three months of his year.

Sakura's kunai stopped halfway to his throat. In a short while, this boy could be back on his farm, his village's labour tithe for the year complete, or he could die here now, killed by someone he didn't know for a reason he didn't understand. It seemed she wasn't the only one with bad timing.

As she made to thrust the blade forward the boy woke, his bleary eyes opening to drink in the blank white visage looming over him. He shouted in alarm as he kicked out with his foot. Sakura, caught off guard, had tried to twist out of the way at the last second but he still managed to clip her in the hip. She didn't quite tumble but was forced back by the panicked power behind the blow.

There was a wordless yell. Sakura wasn't sure from whom. She was too busy redirecting a clumsy spear thrust. The boy hadn't been so stupid as to not keep his weapon with him.

"Who the fuck are you?!" the boy yelled and made another thrust.

Sakura was reacting on pure reflex, drilled into her relentlessly by the Taisa for the last few months. The spear point went sailing over left shoulder as she stepped closer as she ducked. The spear, as melee weapons went, was a long range one, excellent at keeping the enemy at bay and particularly effective in massed formations. That it was also cheap and simple to make only doubled the reasons that it was the most common weapon in any conventional armed force. Still, it had its weaknesses.

Once past the spear point it was simple for Sakura to snake her arm around the boy's and with a twist of her hips, send her foot smashing into the side of his knee. As he fell forward with a yelp of pain Sakura slipped her kunai into the crook of his elbow and in a smooth motion sliced into the anterior tendons. The spear went clattering from his grip as he screamed.

He was in a heap on the floor as Sakura stood over him, and she found an apology almost spilling from her mouth. It would have, if the boy hadn't spun onto his back swinging at her with a heavy iron hook at the end of a rope. Normally used to lash pallets together it was now being used as a makeshift weapon. Though it barely clipped her in the temple, it was enough. It sent her vision swimming and her body stumbling backwards as she lost her grip on her kunai.

Before she could see him, she heard him. He was screaming, a throat ripping cry that came from the depths of his stomach. It was filled with hate, curdled to a greater intensity by the fear of death. He couldn't stand but he threw himself, as best he could, against Sakura. They both went crashing to the ground in a tangle of limbs and as they rolled to a halt, the boy was on top with both his hands wrapped around Sakura's throat.

He was still screaming, even as their faces were only inches apart, and he kept on screaming even as he slowly choked the life out of the girl beneath him. At first Sakura tried to pry the boy's hands from her throat, but the lack of leverage and his desperate strength made that futile. So she started hitting him, smashing her fist into his face again and again. The tears dripping from his eyes onto her mask was soon joined by blood, but he didn't let go.

It was as her vision started to black out that her desperate hand found the touch of cool metal and without any hesitation she slammed it into her assailant's ribs. He stiffened immediately and the screaming petered out into a low moan.

Sakura rolled him off her and stood, gulping big lung-fulls of air as the spots cleared from her vision. The boy was on his back, a puddle of blood growing under him, and the hilt of her kunai was protruding from between his third and fourth ribs. He wasn't dead though. He had one pale white hand outstretched towards Sakura. At first she thought he was trying to grab at her but then she saw it, the lock of hair tied with raw string. It was lying between her feet. He was mouthing something, trying to force the air to form the words. Sakura thought she could hear him.

"Ka…e…de….Ka….e…de….Ka…e…de."

He kept repeating those three syllables and Sakura watched his eyes go glassy as he died with the name on his lips.

She staggered out of there, unaware of how long she had stayed, and struggled with the waves of nausea and dizziness that assaulted her. She told herself that she still had four more warehouses to rig up and possibly a concussion though she had doubts if that was truly why she felt sick.

* * *

Sasuke was the last to arrive at the rendezvous point, a small grove of trees on what passed for a hill in the area that overlooked the compound. He pulled up the leather pouch slung over his shoulder and passed it to Kakashi. His objective had been to ransack the small wooden keep, adjacent to the bailey, for anything that looked important, maps, manifests, orders, any scrap bit of paper that had something on it. As soon as the pouch was off him Sasuke slumped down next to his pack as the Taisa started going through them.

Night had fallen hours ago and the moon had almost waxed away but there was still just enough light to see by. The smell of ash choked the air and a deep red glow had engulfed one edge of the horizon. The warehouses in the compound they had just attacked were burning, a thousand tons of food, the sweat and blood of hundreds of peasants, reduced to nothing and carried away by the wind.

Sakura was already asleep, scrunched up under a mossy cloak, but Naruto was still up. The blonde was looking out from the branch of a tree with an eyeglass, glued to his face, pointed at the compound.

"What are you doing up there?" Sasuke asked.

"Waiting." Naruto replied.

Sasuke rolled his eyes under his mask and started to paw inside his pack for a ration bar.

"For what?" he asked.

"I planted about fifty boom tags down there." Naruto said. "and they would have seen that fire at the Ikeda garrison no problem."

"So?" Sasuke said. Getting information from Naruto was like pulling teeth.

"So, if they sortied as soon as they saw the smoke, they should be here soon." Naruto said.

Just as he spoke Sasuke spotted the glimmer of a few pinpricks of light appearing from across a bridge. From the number of torches there seemed to be roughly forty riders and given their formation they had someone important with them, most likely the commander of the Ikeda garrison.

The garrison was a strategically important force, occupying the principle line of fortification that guarded the border between Tanzakugawa and its neighbour to the north. Its commander was also well known to be a severe and martial man, who took any excuse to ride out and run men down on the point of his spear. It also happened that he was a cousin to the lord of Tanzakugawa, one Sanada Masayuki.

Sasuke watched as the torches eventually disappeared into the compound, swallowed by the brighter light, and he could imagine the horror on their faces as they realised there was nothing they could do. A few moments later Kakashi stepped over next to Naruto and held his hand out as the cadet passed him the eyeglass. The Taisa brought it up to his one uncovered eye and surveyed the compound himself before tossing the brass tube back to Naruto.

"Konoha takes its contracts very seriously and the Hokage is no fool." Kakashi said. "The Hokage himself asked us to send this message to Sanada-dono on his behalf, and Yellow gets to be the delivery boy."

He gave a curt nod to said boy who then perked up as he pulled a metal cylinder out of his pocket. Throwing both arms into the air Naruto shouted at the top of his voice.

"Jiji says hello motherfuckers!"

He shot chakra into the receiver.

A visible shockwave that bent the air came exploding from the compound, obliterating whatever structures had been left standing and most likely vaporising anything as soft as a human. It hit the Konoha team at the top of the rise almost hard enough to stagger them and was accompanied by a deafening blast that felt like it halted the blood in their chests.

No one spoke as they looked out at the inky night. The explosion had snuffed out all the flames and the sudden change in the level of light left them all blind in the night. They could hear the debris pattering against the ground, however, and it culminated ten seconds later in a twisted samurai helmet skidding to a halt at Naruto's feet.

"By the sage…." Naruto whispered and then shouted. "That was fucking awesome!"

He even did a little dance as Sasuke looked on, trying his hardest to hide his growing smile. Sakura had also shot awake and was looking like she had just been kicked in the backside.

"Get your packs." Kakashi said. "We will make camp at point Iroha and continue on to the next objective in the morning."


	8. Chapter 8

Team NANBU were resting in a post station town along the East Sea Road. After the destruction of the supply dump near Ikeda and two nearby bridges they were in no hurry to leave the province. A few silver coins, a flash of their identification chits and they had been waved through the gates of the town with little scrutiny. The East Sea Road was the main artery for land based traffic for the entire eastern side of the Land of Fire. It stretched from the border with the Land of Hot Water down to the border with the Land of Tea, following the contours of the coast. One more squad of shinobi from the Leaf were barely worth any notice beyond the double toll, and it would take an idiot to try and extract any graft from such a group.

Once in the town, they were the only patrons in a small and dirty inn. It was a low building, partially sunk into the ground, with a thatched roof that was fraying away like a receding hairline. Only the barest flakes of paint left on the sign revealed that it was called the Blue Water Inn. Sakura could have sworn she had heard rats crawling in the walls. When she had voiced her concerns, Kakashi's only response had been a short comment about operational budgets.

"So… Taisa," Naruto said.

The room they had rented was small enough that they could whisper and still hear each other. At the moment Naruto was sharpening some of his kunai while Sasuke read and Sakura shared a pot of tea with their superior officer who was engrossed in his own orange book. Though much to their consternation, none of the cadets had managed to spot when the Jounin took a sip. The level of liquid in the cup seemed to just go down on its own. Unlike them Kakashi seemingly never took off his mask, even to eat or drink.

"Yes?" Kakashi said.

"You still haven't taught us any ninjutsu." Naruto said.

"That's true." Kakashi replied.

Naruto waited, the whetstone idle in his hand, waiting for the man to elaborate. Then he realised he hadn't actually asked a question, a niggling little technicality that Kakashi loved to abuse.

"Why?" Naruto said.

Sasuke didn't close his book, but his eyes did wander towards the older man. Sakura, in contrast, had forgotten about her tea entirely and was staring intently at the Jounin. It was as if she were a soldier ready to catch an arrow with the seriousness she exuded. If Kakashi had been anyone else he might have been unnerved by the intensity of it, but he found he could only commend her. At that thought his eyes flitted over the other two members and he was tempted to shake his head. Of course the talented ones had to be the worst students.

"Did you need any?" He said.

"Well no…" Naruto said. "But chakra techniques are what differentiate us from civilians and Samurai, right?"

"Don't strain yourself dead last, we're on a mission." Sasuke said.

It took a few seconds for the insult to register.

"Oh haha. Fucker." Naruto said.

Kakashi held his hand up. The slight raising of his fingers was enough to get them to shut their mouths but it didn't stop the exchange of dirty looks.

"That's a fair question that deserves a fair answer." Kakashi said. "Simply put, ninjutsu is the least efficient method in improving your effectiveness as a shinobi at the moment. Now the question is why I am right, besides that fact that I am always right?"

He lifted his chin at Sasuke who then put his own book away and came to sit closer with his other teammates. He had been lounging on the single couch in the room but was now seated with the rest of them at the rickety table that occupied the centre of the room.

"Because they're time consuming to learn." He said.

Kakashi gave the answer a slow, half nod.

"A partial answer." He said. "Any additions Yellow?"

"…I guess we got so much other stuff to learn that'll make us better shinobi and stuff that it's not worth it to do ninjutsu stuff now?" Naruto said.

"It's because of chakra advantage and also the replacement threshold." Sakura said.

The two boys turned their heads at Sakura's sudden interjection. Naruto had his brows stitched together as he chewed on the sentence, trying to put it together, while Sasuke's lips turned a slight downwards crease.

Kakashi motioned for Sakura to continue as she had stopped herself with a blush.

"Because we haven't fully matured ninjutsu has less utility for us as it's more costly as a proportion of total chakra than it would be for an adult. This comes from the concept of chakra advantage, which states that if you have spent less proportional chakra than your opponent in an otherwise equal exchange, you now hold the advantage. For this reason taijutsu and bukijutsu are the mainstay in early training."

When she saw Kakashi nodding along, she continued.

"Also, the replacement threshold, named after the body replacement technique, states that as the difference in hand seal execution time between a given technique and your opponent's corresponding countermeasure increases, the less practical that technique is. Or in other words, if your fire technique isn't faster than his replacement technique, you might as well not bother. As a result, since developing total chakra pool, chakra control, hand dexterity and reducing the number of discrete seals in a technique are a time consuming and ongoing process, it is usually only Chūnin and higher who invest significant time in ninjutsu."

"An excellent answer which explains why, that when I do teach you ninjutsu, it will be primarily utility and support types. This is also why I place so much emphasis on the intelligent use of tools." Kakashi said. "Very good Pink, you do yourself credit."

Said girl preened from the compliment.

"I suppose it would be impractical to hope either of you will emulate her in this regard?" Kakashi continued.

Sasuke scoffed and closed his eyes with his head tilted back and arms crossed. Naruto, however, had his chin resting in the valley between his thumb and forefinger and after stroking a non-existent beard he scratched the back of his head.

"But I have tons of Chakra already. Doesn't that mean I don't need to worry about all that?" he said.

Kakashi kept his face carefully blank when he heard the question. There were many axioms regarding shinobi combat. What every S-rank shinobi shared was that they all broke at least one of these axioms. It simply didn't apply to them and so could be leveraged to put them at a cut above other shinobi. What no one needed was Naruto discovering he already qualified for that particular pre-requisite.

"That is only one of the four parameters Sakura listed." Kakashi said. "If you did concentrate the bulk of your time in ninjutusu, you would most likely be killed before you ever executed a second technique."

"Yeah… I guess." Naruto mumbled.

"Since we're already asking questions." Kakashi said. "Why don't I ask you three what the rationale behind our last mission was?"

"Telling Sanada not to fuck with us." Naruto said.

He nodded sagely and smirked like he had just nailed the answer.

"You're a moron." Sasuke said with a sigh.

"Yeah well if you know better genius why don't you share?" Naruto replied.

"Fine." Sasuke said. "The obvious reason was to stop Tanzakugawa from being able to move an army up north. No food, no army. Killing the commander of the Ikeda garrison was just a bonus. By the time they scrounge together enough food and repair the bridges to try again the campaign season will be over. They'll have to wait at least until next year."

"And by then our contract with the Kato Kiyomasa, lord of the territory up north, will be over. Then it won't be our problem." Sakura added. "We stopped any casualties we might have taken had the war started this year and did exactly enough to fulfil our contractual obligations."

Kakashi smiled when he heard Sakura's deeper analysis.

"What, so we avoid fighting as much as we can until we don't have to? Even though that's exactly what this Kiyomasa guy is paying us for?" Naruto said. "That feels kinda dirty."

"Welcome to shinobi life Yellow." Kakashi said. "Remember to always look underneath the underneath."

* * *

The next morning the four of them were, once again, on the road. It was roughly midday, though it was difficult to tell through the overcast skies. They had turned off the East Sea Road hours before, leaving its well paved surface for a dusty track that snaked its way towards Konoha. It bore all the signs of long neglect, being an unpopular route for merchants. Weeds and unrepaired ruts were everywhere and they had yet to see another traveler.

Over the months he had spent in Team NANBU, Naruto had realised a few things about being a shinobi. Killing bad guys, epic ninjutsu battles, gold flowing like water, these were the things he had imagined during his youth. It turned out those things were rarer than he had thought. All the stories about the Hokage past and present, the three shinobi world wars, and the legends they created were the highlight reels. In reality most of everything seemed to be about marching and waiting and listening to boring lectures. Even their last mission had been three days of marching punctuated by three hours of frantic action. Now it was back to marching and at some point there would be some more waiting and probably another lecture thrown in for good measure.

The stone Naruto had been kicking along for the last hour came to a halt against the back of Kakashi's boot. The man had suddenly stopped in his tracks, with his head tilted to one side.

"Taisa?" Naruto asked.

"Find a nest." He said.

The three cadets reacted to the order immediately, each of them scrambling up one of the trees along the roadside. Of course they were nowhere near the size of the trees at home, but they still provided a good bit of elevation.

"What do you see?" Kakashi said.

Naruto was still fumbling with the oiled leather case that carried his eyeglass when Sasuke answered.

"A dust cloud, probably riders, about ten of them an hour and a half ride behind us." He said.

Kakashi hummed. The Jounin himself hadn't climbed up a tree, but he was facing in the general direction of the approaching riders.

"Yellow and Pink, your estimates please." He said.

"I'd say closer to twenty." Naruto said "at an hour."

"Fifteen at an hours distance, maybe." Sakura said.

"Congratulations Yellow, there are twenty one riders at an hours distance." Kakashi said.

Naruto smirked as a flash of irritation flew over Sasuke's face. Not even the Sharingan could make you good at everything.

"Prepare an Ambush at the next bend." Kakashi said.

The three cadets rushed forward with Naruto leading. The blonde boy was already pulling things from his pack as he ran.

Roughly an hour later, hidden in the underbrush, Naruto heard the approaching riders. There was nothing quite like the sound of many hooves beating into the earth. It was like a little piece of manmade thunder that proceeded, what many samurai probably preferred to think was, a manmade storm. In reality it was just men made from the same flesh as anyone else, riding animals as stupid as any other.

Kakashi was seated in the center of the road, on a large smooth stone that acted like a dividing line. He had a book in his hand and his open canteen in the other and he didn't react at all when the horsemen turned the bend and started riding around him in a wide circle. It took them a moment to slow, first to a trot, and then to a standstill.

There were exactly twenty one of them, wearing blue trimmed white breastplates over thick cotton shirts embroidered with the six point star of the Sanada clan. They all held their spears in their hands and bows strung over their shoulders.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" Kakashi said.

One of them came forward. Unlike the others his belt was laced and held a pair of blades, one short, one long. Kakashi casted an appraising eye over the rest of the man's equipment. There was another clan symbol, an inverted flower, embossed below the Sanada's six point star on the man's scabbard. Yet there was little in the way of ornamentation, the clasps and other small accessories on the man's armour and weapons were simple iron affairs. He was a samurai of a minor house at best and given the man's age no more than a kumigashira of a regional patrol.

"You, shinobi." The man said.

"Yes?" Kakashi replied.

The man slumped in his saddle, and for a moment rubbed his eyes with one hand. A long sigh escaped from between his lips.

"You are under arrest." The samurai said.

It was eerie seeing Kakashi's eyebrow rise up along with his slowly widening eye. None of the Genin had ever seen such an expression on the man before. It was neither convincing nor genuine to any of them, though perhaps that was only because they knew better.

"May I know who I am speaking to?" Kakashi said.

"I am Kumigashira Hosokawa Soun of the Hosokawa clan." The man said.

"Well, Hosokawa-san. Under whose authority are you arresting me?" Kakashi said.

"Well… the lord of this land, Sanada Masayuki." The samurai replied.

If anything, the man fell deeper into his saddle. Even some of the soldiers looked distinctly uncomfortable. One of them was fiddling with his reins and another was chewing through his fingernails.

"Well I'm afraid I'm not held to such an authority, only to the Hokage's and the daimyo's." Kakashi replied.

"Yes, I know. Unfortunately, my lord has decreed all Konoha shinobi inside his territory are to be arrested under suspicion for the murder of his cousin, Sanada Ichiro." The samurai said. "I'm very sorry."

Kakashi chuckled.

"Oh no." he said. "He didn't."

Hosokawa grimaced openly

"I'm afraid he did." He said.

"And you understand that I have a duty to my lord to resist this unlawful arrest?" Kakashi said.

As he had said it Kakashi had slowly put his book away and capped his canteen, and with an exaggerated slowness, pulled a kunai into each hand. He then rolled his shoulders casually, like he was warming up for some light exercise. Most of the soldiers had gone pale. They all knew that the jacket Kakashi wore meant he was a Jounin.

"Just as you understand that I have a duty to carry out my orders." Hosokawa replied.

The samurai dismounted and passed his spear and reins to the man next to him. He then stepped forward to join Kakashi in the circle of men. There was a soft click as he released the first centimeter of his blade with a push of his thumb.


	9. Chapter 9

A deep breath in. A deep breath out. Kakashi's breathing fell into a rhythm long beaten into his body as he felt the cold steel gripped in each hand. His left foot shifted several inches rearward and his center came down and forward. Blood pumped into his muscles, his irises doubled in size, and the hot wash of adrenaline flowed down his limbs. Yet his heart barely quickened and his frame remained as steady as stone. The sensation was an old friend. He knew its nature well and he kept it firmly leashed.

Then, in a single moment, it all drained away. Terror, that was the only thing written on his opponents face. Wide pleading eyes stared back at him from Hosokawa Soun as the Samurai's hand, hidden near the grip of his blade, frantically signed at him in ANBU shorthand.

"Friend. Spy. Don't kill."

Despite rumours to the contrary Kakashi was not a sadistic man. Yet he couldn't help the niggling amusement that scratched at the corners of his mouth as he let the moment stretch on. The man had been growing noticeably paler as they stood across from each other. Eventually Kakashi gave the man a wide smile and slipped his kunai back into his holster.

"On second thought." Kakashi said. "We surrender."

Like a visible sigh the tension suddenly drained away from the cavalrymen and the Samurai's shoulders slumped forward in relief.

"What the fuck do you mean we surrender?"

A shout came from the woods and Naruto came tumbling out of the trees, scrabbling upright as he rushed forward. He had some twenty bombs of various size hanging on a bandolier across his chest and within easy reach. Kakashi was only slightly relieved that most of them appeared to be smoke and flash bombs.

"We totally had these guys." He said.

Sakura and Sasuke walked out from the opposite side of the road looking equally confused. Kakashi turned his smile on them.

"Did I tell you three to fall in?" he said.

Naruto jerked his hands up into a defensive posture and froze in place. His two team mates had also stiffened.

"Um… no… you didn't." he gulped.

"No matter." Kakashi said and turned back to the Samurai. "Considering the importance of a high ranking officer such as myself, Hosokawa-dono will be hosting us at his home until such a time Konoha secures our release. Isn't that correct Hosokawa-dono?"

Said man's jaw was slack and his hand was sitting limp on the grip of his blade. His mouth oscillated for a moment, up and down, until his brain finally caught up.

"Of-of course!" he said. "On my honour you nor your team will not be harmed until the proper negotiations are carried out."

"Very good." Kakashi said as he shouldered his pack. "Lead the way."

* * *

Kakashi was pleased to find his initial estimation of the Samurai to be correct. His home, in the nearby village of Kitadaito, was a tiny walled compound barely larger than that of the peasants around him. It was rustic, more clay brick than stone and more timber than clay brick. It was well kept, however, maintained with care and invested with labour to make its humble appeal shine through. A small vegetable patch filled most of the space in the foreyard and a path paved with uncut river stones snaked around it to the front veranda.

The team were standing just inside the single doored gate that hung on the wall as they watched the Samurai lead his own horse to a single stall off to the side.

"Well this is my home." Hosokawa said. "I have a few fields towards the north I rent to a few good families. Otherwise I only make some small income leading the local patrols. I mean no offence to you Jounin-dono."

"None taken, Hosokawa-dono." Kakashi inclined his head slightly. "This is more than adequate. In fact, my three subordinates would be more than happy to bunk in your storehouse. We wouldn't want to intrude upon you over much."

The Samurai looked vaguely uncomfortable at first, trying to see if Kakashi had meant some slight by his remark, but finding nothing he nodded his head. He peeked out of the corner of his eye at the three younger shinobi, only to be met with the matte surface of their porcelain masks. He still chuckled when he spotted the blond one throw his arms under his armpits in a huff. They were still kids.

It was then that the front door opened to the side as a young woman in a plain blue kimono, perhaps in her mid-twenties, stepped out onto the veranda and sat on her knees. Her mousy brown hair was long and framed a small, round face that lacked any hard edges. In contrast, her thick calves and the square of her shoulders proved every finger on her body would be callused, not only the forefinger and thumb that held a lady's needle.

"Danna-sama, you're finally home." She said, coming out of a bow.

Hosokawa nodded and moved towards her with a smile and his arms held open.

"Not that I knew you had gone anywhere. Would it kill you to let your wife know before you go gallivanting around the country side like you always do?" she said.

Hosokawa blanched and stopped where he was.

"It was work! I was working!" he said.

"I'm sure." She replied. "And these guests?"

The samurai cleared his throat and straightened up.

"I'm afraid I had to arrest them by our lord's decree, but considering this man's high rank I invited him to stay at our home. It's all a big misunderstanding you see…" He said.

His wife narrowed her eyes.

"Criminals." She said.

"Guests." Hosokawa sighed. "Just show the man to the guest room Kanako. Then come help me with my armour."

* * *

It was several hours later that they gathered in the main room of the house for dinner. The lady of the house had remained frosty and quickly retreated to her own room after the food had been served. The cry of a baby somewhere in the house was the only noise beside the sounds of eating.

Kakashi had watched Hosokawa carefully when he had allowed his three subordinates to remove their masks. In particular, he noted the Samurai's lack of reaction when his eyes had passed over Naruto's whiskered face.

"So, Hosokawa-dono." Kakashi said. "Mind explaining yourself? Not many Samurai would know that particular language."

The Samurai finished off the last of his miso soup in a single large gulp and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Well first of all, thanks for not slaughtering us all." He said.

Kakashi slightly raised his own bowl of soup.

"The least I could do. Wouldn't want to needlessly destroy your cover." Kakashi replied. "Now if you please, an explanation."

The Samurai grasped his tea cup in both hands and stared into it, as if some of the answers would be found in the leaves floating in the steaming water. He worked his jaw for a moment before the first words came out.

"I learned it because I've been spying for Konoha for some fifteen years now." He said.

"Are you a spook?" Kakashi said. "If so, which compartment?"

"Yes, compartment Saba-twenty-two." Hosokawa sighed. "You see, I graduated from the academy, but I was terrible at pretty much everything. In the end the only thing useful about me was that I came from a minor Samurai house. Though we only just qualified. In fact, my father had to sell his swords to pay for my admission to the academy…"

Kakashi stayed silent as the man trailed off but kept his eye squarely on the man's face. The Samurai refused to meet it, instead continuing to stare into his cup.

"…So in the end." Hosokawa eventually continued. "I spent quite a few years simply travelling as a ronin, keeping my eyes and ears open in Samurai circles for anything Konoha might want to know. Eventually I saved up enough to start this little homestead and meet my wife."

Hosokawa finally looked up with a lopsided grin that didn't quite reach his eyes only for it to fall open into shock as Naruto suddenly burst into tears.

"That's amazing!" Naruto said. "All that hardship, all those failures despite your dad's sacrifice."

"I wouldn't say failures per-"

"And you overcame them all to find happiness in the end." Naruto bulldozed on. "I'm moved Hosokawa-san."

The boy stood and moved over to the Samurai's side, gripped him on the shoulder, and gave him a firm nod, completely ignoring Sakura's glare from the opposite side of the table. In the lull in conversation the baby could still be heard crying. It had only grown louder as the meal had progressed.

"Is your child ill Hosokawa-dono?" Sakura asked, trying to steer to conversation in another direction.

The samurai, still slightly bewildered by Naruto's reaction, answered half-heartedly.

"I'm afraid so. I've had to call the doctor from the next town over several times." He said. "But she doesn't seem to be improving."

The mood once again became muted and Sakura cringed inwardly as a pained look flitted over the Samurai's face. Naruto was just crying harder and Sasuke was pointedly ignoring the lot of them.

* * *

They spent the next few days at the Hosokawa home. Kakashi had sent a message to Konoha with one of his summons and they were awaiting a response. The Jounin had explained to his students that there was no doubt that Konoha would respond to the arrest of so many of their shinobi. By staying in the area, they provided the Hokage with some flexibility in that response.

It was on the third night that Naruto was nudged awake by a steel toed boot. He was wrapped up in his sleeping roll in a corner of the storehouse when he came to, and looming above him was the tall, lanky frame of his instructor.

"Taisa?" he murmured, his eye's still blurry with sleep.

"Get up, wake up the other two and come out to the foreyard." Kakashi said.

The man melted back into the shadows and Naruto quickly roused his two team mates. It took them mere minutes to equip all their gear and move out. What they found when they arrived, however, was not what they were expecting.

Hosokawa Soun was sitting against the wall, bloodied and limp, as the full moon bathed the yard in a cold blue light. His chest was still rising and falling but had been pinned in one corner to wall by a kunai.

"Taisa?" Sakura said.

Kakashi was standing above the injured man, his attention on a small scroll no larger than Sakura's fifth finger. His boot was pressed on the Samurai's left leg, under which a small puddle of blood was visible. The shadows made it difficult to see, but there was a sharp intake of breath when the three Genin realised the man no longer had a left leg. Only the pressure Kakashi kept on the stump kept the man from bleeding out.

"What the hell is going on?" Naruto said.

"Let this be a lesson to you three." Kakashi said. "Traitors die a dog's death."

The words in Naruto's throat died.

"Traitor?" He croaked.

Kakashi, with a casual toss, sent a small bag and the scroll flying through the air. Naruto caught them awkwardly, opening up his palms to reveal the gleam of gold coins peeking out from the silk bag. He unrolled the small scroll, ignoring his two team mates crowding in next to him to read it as well. It was a coded message, one Naruto couldn't decipher, but it wasn't anything Konoha used. It had the features of something from the Land of Lightning.

A cough from the dying samurai caused Naruto's head to snap up.

"Please." Hosokawa groaned. "My wife, she doesn't know. I have some… money stashed away in my office. Give it to her."

"Traitors gold." Sasuke spat at the ground.

Naruto pushed past Sasuke and squatted in front of the Samurai.

"Why'd you do it man?" Naruto said. "Why would you do this?"

"My daughter." Hosokawa managed to bite out as blood bubbled out the corner of his lip. He was wracked with coughs.

Sakura whispered with her eyes cast down.

"A good doctor can cost as much as half a Ryo for a single visit." She said. "Not easy to afford even for most Samurai if you need them to come multiple times."

"What and you think that excuses him?" Sasuke whirled around with a twisted expression.

Sakura shrunk bank and lifted both hands in a placating gesture.

"No!" she said. "I just…"

"He's scum." Sasuke said.

"Well, Hosokawa-kun." Kakashi spoke. "If you tell me who you report to, I'll grant your last request. Otherwise…."

The man's glassy eyes became kindled with a desperate shine when he heard those words. He looked up at Kakashi and, with a strain visible in the wrinkles on his face, he worked his mouth to form the last words of his life.

"Anro Rokakku." He gasped and fell back into a boneless heap.

Kakashi stepped off the dead man's amputated leg and let the last vestiges of blood soak into the earth. He then sent Naruto to retrieve the gold from Hosokawa's office and waited until he came back.

"You're not actually going to give it to her are you?" Sasuke said.

"She didn't do anything wrong." Sakura muttered. "And neither did their daughter."

"Did you say something?" Sasuke said.

"The man's sins are his own, Blue." Kakashi cut in.

"Fine. Whatever." Sasuke bit back.

Just as Naruto returned, a scream pierced the night. It was the Samurai's wife, Kanako, standing on the open veranda. She came running over with complete disregard to her dishevelled night clothes and threw herself over the man's body. Her cries wailed to a fever pitch before bubbling down to a series of wracking heaves and sobs. Her fingers were coiled up in Hosokawa's shirt, tugging on it like she could pull him up from the grave. She hadn't even acknowledged the shinobi's existence.

Kakashi took the bag of gold from Naruto and placed it next to the grieving woman.

"He left this for you and your child." He said. "It would also be best if you moved far from here. Somewhere south or west."

She didn't reply and Kakashi signalled for the squad to retrieve their packs. They wouldn't be staying tonight.

They were only a few steps from the front gate when another shrill cry came from behind them. The four shinobi twisted around to see Kanako, still in her night clothes, standing at the gate with a naginata held in both hands. It was the traditional weapon of Samurai wives, but she held it more like a hoe than the implement of war it was.

"You fucking scum." She screamed. "I am Hosokawa Kanako, wife of Hosokawa Soun. I refuse to let you walk away."

Tears were streaming down her face, and her hands were shaking. Next to the length of her polearm she seemed small. Yet the three cadets found themselves shuffling backwards as she approached.

"Please, think of your daughter Kanako-san." Sakura pleaded. "Don't do this."

The woman charged, unheeding of Sakura's words, with the naginata held high above her head. She started to thrust and swing at them madly as she continued to scream her throat raw and it seemed she wouldn't stop until she collapsed. Then, suddenly, a kunai caught her in the throat. She dropped like a sack of rice and hit the ground with a thud as her weapon clattered away.

The three cadets froze and watched as Kakashi slowly walked up to her body and retrieved his dagger.

"You killed her." Naruto said.

With a sick squelch of flesh, he pulled the kunai free from her and slowly wiped it on her clothes.

"She was a dutiful wife, if not a dutiful mother." Kakashi replied. "we gave her a choice and this is what she chose."

Naruto turned to his two team mates, searching for their feelings. Sakura seemed just as sickened as he was but Sasuke seemed no more bothered than Kakashi himself.

"…You guys are fucking psychos." Naruto muttered.

Kakashi shrugged.

"Let's move." He said.

As they left Sakura threw a look over her shoulder at the home behind them. She could just barely hear the cries of a baby.


	10. Chapter 10

The shadows of three figures licked against the walls of the Hokage's office. There was only the anaemic light of a single lamp and the soft sound of shuffling papers occupying the room. A coil of smoke slipped from between the Hokage's lips and hung around him like a curtain.

Across from him, standing at attention, was Nara Shikaku, the Jounin Commander, and beside him was Ibiki Morino, the chief intelligence officer. The pair were reporting to him late into the night armed with freshly inked papers. There was quarter of an hour of silence as the Hokage scanned through the reports, his eyes flicking down each page with a practiced ease.

"So," Sarutobi finally spoke, "the salient question is, where did he get the coin?"

Shikaku wordlessly reached into the pouch at his waist and pulled out a slab of gleaming metal. It was the size of his palm, rectangular with rounded corners. The upper and lower thirds were ridged and the center marked with a round mon depicting the character for Hot Spring.

"The currency is a mix of coinage from various northern countries, including the Land of Lighting. The bulk of it, however, is Hot Spring ryo from the Maitama mint. As far as we can tell they're genuine."

Sarutobi received the oversized coin and turned it over in his hand, feeling its weight, and the depth of the embossing on its surface. With a grunt he placed it on his desk and peered at his two subordinates over the top of his hands clasped in front of him.

"Yet impossible." He stated.

Shikaku nodded.

"Even if they had that much they couldn't move a half ton of gold without us knowing." He replied. "There's also a lack of motive for sending this kind of money to a Fire Lord. So far we've accounted for about ninety percent of the purchases made, mainly food stuffs and construction material. The remaining ten has been stubborn."

At that moment Shikaku flicked his eyes to Ibiki beside him. The man with a scarred and dour face had yet to say a thing, but seemed content to remain silent.

"There's been no signs of rearmament in Hot Spring, same as always. They're still using spears made when my grandfather was still around." Shikaku said.

"Then there are only two possibilities. Confirm which would you?" Sartutobi replied. "Also, it seems Cloud wants to throw its weight around and Sanada-dono has a hidden backer. Find out if these two are linked."

"Of course Hokage-sama." Shikaku said.

He gave a neat bow followed by Ibiki and turned and left the room. The moment the door to the office shut behind him his posture loosened and he shrunk an inch into a slouch. A long sigh escaped from his mouth.

"Troublesome." He muttered.

Ibiki was long used to the cryptic comments his superior enjoyed making at times like these. He didn't even bother asking since most of the time the answer was that it was too troublesome to explain.

"Good night Nara-hanchō" was all he said.

The dark, sharp features of the head Jōnin softened for a second.

"Don't get too fond of sleep Ibiki. On top of all this, the Chūnin exams are only half a year away." He said.

Then he turned around and stalked down the hallway.

* * *

Naruto wiped his forehead on his sleeve, leaving it damp with a slick of sweat. The sun was beating down mercilessly. He had stripped off his jacket long ago, his body was streaked with dirt, and he was up to his waist in a hole he had spent the last thirty minutes digging.

He peered up out of the hole to see Kakashi lounging with an orange book in the branch of a tree. He grimaced. Around him were four or five similar holes, dug even deeper than the one he was standing in.

"Taisa," he said. "Why the hell are we digging a bunch of holes in the middle of nowhere?"

For a moment Naruto thought Kakashi hadn't heard him, but eventually the man lazily lowered his book and looked down on his subordinate.

"Well unfortunately you decided to join the Konoha shinobi corps and then was further unfortunate by being assigned under me. Then some lord named Sananda Masayuki felt he needed his neighbours land and despite burning down all his food he's still determined to go through with it. So here we are." He said.

"That's…" Naruto sighed.

Then a clod of dirt hit him in the back of the head.

"Keep digging, you lazy ass." Sakura grunted and flung another spadeful of dirt over her shoulder.

Naruto shook the dirt out from his hair and picked up his shovel while muttering under his breath in an awful falsetto.

"Keep digging meh meh meh. I'm Sakura, queen of the world."

Sakura turned her head and threw her spade to the side where it stood straight up, buried up to its neck.

"Did you say something?" she said.

"Not a thing." Naruto smiled back.

Sakura seemed to want to say more but on Naruto's next thrust, instead of giving dirt he hit something with a clang.

"The hell?" he said. "Hey you guys, I found something."

His two team mates came over to his spot with their shovels and watched as Naruto used his hands to clear away some of the dirt. The corner of a box, matte metallic and green, could just barely be seen.

They spent the next hour digging it out. It was almost two meters in length and half a meter deep with a string of numbers and the symbol of the leaf stencilled on the lid.

"You knew this was here the entire time." Naruto said.

The hole they found it in was right next to the tree Kakashi had been resting in since they started digging. The man just shrugged and jumped down, landing lightly on his feet.

"Good job team." He said.

He walked over once the three Genin had pulled the box from the hole and casually kicked it open, revealing a heavy canvas liner. Throwing it back Naruto could see the gleam of oiled blades and smell the iron tang particular to paper seals.

"Our mission is to set up a forward outpost just outside the border town of Wadomari. A delegation from the Hidden Leaf will be meeting with their counterparts in the Masayuki administration. If complication arise we're to act as a reserve or blocking force."

Naruto pulled out a fat brick of explosive seals wrapped in waxed paper.

"You mean all of this stuff is for us?" he said with wide eyes.

Kakashi chuckled then said,

"It's Konoha property but yes, it's for us to use during the mission. Empty it out and bury the box back in the dirt. We're moving in an hour."

Naruto sketched an excited salute and turned to look at his two team mates. Both of them were looking at him like he was a dog with a new toy.

"Aren't you easy to please." Sasuke drawled before rummaging through the box himself.

Sakura was already ahead of him and counting out several kunai to replenish her thigh holster.

* * *

Wadamori turned out to be close to their resupply point. They arrived near the town within a few hours and set themselves up on a nearby hill. This close to the coast the trees were not as gargantuan as they were in the centre of the country and from their elevation they could easily see the spread of timber structures that grew over the terrain like mould on a piece of bread.

It was a walled town, hewn from stone and built by masons rather than the rough wooden palisades common to smaller settlements. On the opposite edge there was a river that split the town in two and led further into cleared land that was carpeted in white. Cotton fields stretched down the rest of the valley, the mouth of which was covered by the town. In the center was the magistrates building, a three storey monstrosity lacquered red at great cost. It was like a ripe pimple in the middle of a blemish on the face of the earth.

It was the first time that Naruto or either of his team mates had seen such a place and they found themselves staring at what was before them.

Eventually the sun was beginning to set and the smell of burning wood, as thousands of homes lit their cooking fires, filled the wind and just barely covered the stench of the city itself. The delegation wasn't to arrive for another day or so and Kakashi set his team digging once again.

All three Genin were hunched over with their entrenching tools as Kakashi paced back and forth on a growing berm of earth.

"When taking a defensive posture, if time and situation permits, a prepared position is always superior. Cover, concealment and creating obstacles is key." He started. "What form this takes depends on the expected offensive capabilities of your enemies. When facing conventional forces, conventional fortifications are best, walls, anti-cavalry stakes, barricades, ditches. When facing shinobi, these are ineffectual at best."

His three students barely reacted to his speech as they were occupied with moving dirt. All three had worked up a sweat and their bodies were sick of digging.

"Long range bombardment techniques and explosive seals have rendered these old types obsolete in the shinobi world. Chakra and seals, however, are not limitless or all powerful and almost always following a period of bombardment will come the close assault. At that point any standing fortifications are meaningless. Earth techniques from the Land of Earth, mist techniques from the Land of Water, and dozens of others can easily neutralise a prepared position. The caveat is that these must all be executed at relatively close range. So the principle objective in mind when preparing a position against shinobi is to minimise casualties during the bombardment stage. Foxholes, trenches, dugouts, earth berms to shield as well as possible. The only other meaningful type of preparation is laying traps."

Naruto rested his arm on the end of his shovel and said,

"Couldn't you do this a hundred times faster with an earth moving technique?"

Kakashi stopped mid stride and mid speech.

"I could," he said. "But you can't. Keep digging Yellow."

With a grumble Naruto did just that.

It was Sasuke that spoke up next. It was surprising enough that all digging stopped as the surly cadet posed his question.

"Does the fact we're digging holes mean we're facing shinobi this time?" he said.

For a moment Kakashi gazed at Sasuke, but with the mask in the way it was doubtful what he was looking for. In contrast it was even harder to read into Kakashi as a silent starting contest occurred between the pair.

Naruto tried not to make it obvious that he was observing the two but it became so when his shovel stopped moving. Even Sakura was staring intently at their teacher.

"It's probable." Kakashi said. "Orders have recently changed. We're also to receive reinforcements as the delegation arrives. Then we are to pull back and return to Konoha. It's been judged that you three are too green for this operation."

"And you don't agree Taisa?" Sakura asked.

Naruto's mouth almost fell open as he rapidly turned his neck from Sasuke on one side and Sakura on the other.

Kakashi replied immediately "No, I agree completely."

Naruto felt something deflate in his chest even as Sakura slumped back into the side of the trench in relief. Of all of them he couldn't believe he felt the most similar with Sasuke. The black haired youth next to him had an ugly grimace pasted over his mouth.

"Will we ever get to actually fight?" Sasuke muttered.

Kakashi chuckled, shook his head and whispered to himself.

"You'll miss these days eventually. Enjoy them while you can."


	11. Chapter 11

The small clearing on the reverse slope of the hill, where Naruto's team had made their outpost, was cloaked in the hiss of rain. It had started in drips and drabs through the night but the darkening of the sky threatened heavier falls for the day. They had managed to dig a simple three sided trench work with two dugouts in the centre the previous day. An earth berm further shielded the central pit that joined the dugouts. It had been gruelling work and after his two team mates had tired out Naruto had completed the rest of it with his clones. When Naruto had complained Kakashi had told him his chakra wasn't as valuable as a Jōnins.

Naruto, by now, had been awake for several hours, taking the last watch of the night. Even swaddled in a thick waxed canvas cloak the wind and wet left him feeling miserable, and the hard rice tack he was chewing did little to improve his mood.

"stupid shitty rations." He mumbled.

"Did you say something Yellow?"

Naruto startled and turned his head to see Kakashi looming over him in similar wet weather gear.

"Nothing." He said with a nervous chuckle.

Kakashi looked down on him for a few more moments, his gaze sitting unwaveringly on him, before he flicked his eye up to the haze of the sun peeking through the clouds. He appeared to be contemplate something for several minutes. At times he tilted his head back towards Naruto as if to say something but each time he drew back.

"Go wake Pink. Tell her she's on mess duty." He eventually said.

Naruto nodded and stood, dusting some dirt off the back of his pants. He was only a few steps away when he sharply stopped into a neat parade rest and did an about turn. Facing Kakashi again he threw his hands into a seal and summoned a shadow clone.

The shadow clone faced his flesh and blood counterpart and sketched a neat salute.

"Yellow-Kōhosei," the clone said. "I am hereby relieving you of sentry duty as per the orders of Hatake Kakashi-Taisa. As of oh-six hundred you are ordered to wake Pink-Kōhosei and inform her of her mess duties."

Naruto straightened up and pressed his spine into an even snappier salute in response to his clone before stalking off towards Sakura's dugout. He thought he might have seen just a twitch in the corner of Kakashi's mouth.

He soon arrived at the dugout and pulled over the canvas door and moved down the short flight of stairs. It was a small room sunk a few meters into the ground. The walls were shorn up with rough cut timbers and it was barely large enough for two people to lie side by side. Sakura was curled up in one corner under a thin blanket. She was sleeping fitfully, muttering in her sleep. From time to time her feet would kick at the dirt.

Naruto moved over to her carefully and stooped over.

"Hey Sakura." He whispered.

She stirred but didn't wake. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, slick with sweat, and she was taking short, shallow breaths.

"Oi," he tried again "Sakura."

He placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. When she still stayed asleep he shook a little harder.

She woke screaming.

Then a sharp pain blossomed in Naruto's stomach.

He reached down and touched the handle of the kunai protruding from his stomach. His fingers came away sticky with his blood.

"Naruto!" Sakura's hoarse voice cried out. "I'm, I'm so sorry. I thought – I thought you were -"

She stood up, her hands both reaching to cover her face and towards the knife in Naruto's gut.

"It's okay. It's okay." Naruto tried to reassure her and pushed her hands away. "Fuck did you think I was trying to kill you?"

With a slight grunt he reached down and pulled the kunai out and felt a warm gush of blood flow down the legs of his pants. He slumped back onto the wall and his knees buckled. Sakura's mouth hinged open and shut as she tried to stutter out some kind of response.

"You just scratched me is all." Naruto continued saying. "Barely a flesh wound."

"Are, are you really trying to act tough right now?" Sakura replied.

She got down on her knees and started to grasp at his tunic buttons but Naruto knocked her hands away.

"I told you I'm fine." He said.

"Shut up, you idiot, and let me help you." She said and redoubled her efforts.

For a moment they fought until she finally managed to rip open his tunic. She wiped away the pooled blood on his stomach but came away with only smooth skin. Naruto looked up at her in the dim light, unable to meet her eyes because of her hair hanging over her face.

"I told you I was fine." He said.

He started to slowly button up his shirt as Sakura seemed frozen with her eyes glazed open.

"How?" she whispered. "What are you?..."

She didn't see it but for a moment Naruto's expression darkened.

"Is it… a bloodline?" she said.

Naruto gave her a wry grin.

"Something like that." He said. "but I told you I was fine."

"I didn't expect this."

Naruto and Sakura both twisted their heads towards the voice. Sasuke was standing in the doorway of the dugout. In the dim light he didn't see the blood that had soaked into Naruto's dark blue fatigues, but he did see Sakura almost straddling a dishevelled Naruto.

"yet somehow I'm not surprised." Sasuke then turned and walked back up the stairs.

Sakura's face developed a red glow before she roughly pushed off Naruto and stormed up the stairs almost forgetting her mask. When she came back for it Naruto told her that she was on mess duty before she stormed out again.

He then spent another second getting his uniform into place and put a finger through the gash that was now in his tunic. With a sigh he trudged up the stairs after his two team mates to get changed into a spare uniform.

By the time he did he could smell the food cooking over the camp fire and he wandered over with his mess kit. It turned out to be some kind of rice porridge with strips of some unidentifiable dried meat soaking in the broth. Sakura was feeding more wood into the fire.

"Looks good Pink." He said.

Naruto was sure that she was rolling her eyes.

"Where's the other two?" Naruto said.

She pointed to the other side of the outpost over the top of the earth berm.

"The platoon who's taking over is almost here. They went to meet them." She said. "… about what happened back there…"

Naruto waved her off and peered back into the pot hanging over the fire.

"Don't worry about it." He said "No harm, no foul as they say. I'm not too keen to talk about it either."

Sakura gave a reluctant nod before returning her focus to her task.

Eventually the pair could hear the voices of their leader and another unfamiliar man drifting over from other side of the berm.

"So I heard that you make your Genin wear masks but I didn't think it was true." The unknown said. "ANBU really fucked you up huh."

"I notice you haven't deployed any scouts." Kakashi ignored the rude comment and pushed on.

"Yeah like this lord asshole is going to actually do anything. It's going to be boring ass week sitting on this hill while the desk-nobi do their pow wow."

"Whoever that other guy is sounds like a real asshole." Naruto whispered to Sakura.

Kakashi hopped down into the central pit where they had set up their camp fire and was followed by Sasuke and another man wearing a Jounin vest. He was fairly non-descript, average height at six feet, brown hair, and a lithe build common in the Land of Fire. The only distinguishing feature was a burn scar that looked as if it had been painted across the left side of his face.

Naruto and Sakura stood to attention and saluted the new arrival.

"Team, this is Namiashi Raidou-Taii. He is the commanding officer of our relief force." Kakashi said.

The man ignored them completely.

"That's cold Kakashi." Raidou said. "We've only known each other for fifteen years and that's all you have to say about me."

Kakashi shrugged and addressed his team.

"You three prepare to move out in one hour. We're returning to Konoha." He said. "Before then ensure you hand over all relevant documents including latrine locations and, in particular, our trap charts. If I find out one of our comrades stepped on one of your tags Yellow and lost his leg, there will be consequences."

Acknowledging the order, the three cadets quickly wolfed down their breakfast before moving to pack their gear and perform their hand over duties. It took the trio only twenty minutes to do so and in the remaining time they chose to sit in one of the covered sections of trench to get out from the rain. The small outpost that had until then been occupied by four people now had an entire platoon of forty camped inside its perimeter who were quickly adding to it with their own entrenchments. Compared to the snail's pace their team had set this platoon was throwing around earth techniques like party favours, and quickly a large portion of the hillside was riddled with defensive works.

"It wasn't what it looked like." Sakura said.

Sasuke didn't even look up from the kunai he was polishing.

"Does it look like I care Pink?" he replied. "Yellow is perfect for you. Like's attract after all, and by that I mean both of you are losers."

Naruto had been trying to nap but sat up at that comment.

"You have to be some kind of socially stunted retard." Naruto moaned "Who the hell explains a perfectly good insult like that. You ruined it."

Sasuke shrugged. "Look, if you two are more concerned with foolish things like a relationship -"

"Is that a hint of jealously I hear in your voice?" Naruto interrupted him.

Sasuke stopped polishing and staked the kunai in his hand into the ground before looking up at Naruto with a hard stare. His jaw was tense and twitching as if he was holding back a fireball down his throat. Naruto, however, remained completely unperturbed and seemed to be having difficulty keeping a smirk off his face.

Before the tension boiled over Sakura stood up and moved in between them.

"Look what actually happened was I accidently stabbed him." She said.

Naruto slapped his forehead.

"Oh like that is so much easier to explain." He mumbled.

Sasuke looked even more confused than when he had walked in on them. Then as Sakura was about to continue her explanation Naruto tackled her to the ground.

He had been looking out of the trench towards the town when he spotted it. It was almost impossible to miss. It started as a rippling curtain of distorted air coming off the tree tops but it's true form revealed itself. A great dragon composed of a roiling red flame arced up into the sky, steam bursting off its hide as it kissed the rain in transit.

Then it fell. It came straight towards their outpost, it's great maw open with rows and rows of dagger like flames churning inside it. It was then that Naruto had tackled his team mate. It was not a moment too soon as then came the impact.

The long sinuous frame of the dragon crashed into the hillside and flowed into an ever expanding circle of fire. First came the sound. It was a deep, low frequency roar that rattled the air in the lungs as the flames came like a tidal wave, greedily sucking in the air and superheating what it left. In its wake each and every blade of grass and whatever human was unfortunate enough to be caught out in the open was consumed, reduced to ash.

Then as soon as it arrived it was gone. Naruto pushed himself up to peer over the edge of the trench and paled when he saw that it wasn't over.

The grey sky was dotted with hundreds of black spots tailed by burning embers. The dragon had just been the beginning.


	12. Chapter 12

For a moment Naruto could only stare. Chakra burned differently from any other kind of fuel. It burned magnesium white. It was like starlight in the day, a mural of pin point lights shimmering in the sky so bright not even the sun could drown them out. In the dim, overcast weather it was almost blinding.

Then came the whistling. Small circular beads carved from wood or bone were attached to the kunai and explosive tags. They were carved in such a way that as they arced through the air they let out a piecing shriek. Naruto didn't know that. He had never heard such a thing before. All he knew was that death was screaming down towards him in a disharmonious cacophony and he was struck motionless by the display. To his eyes, it was beautiful.

A moment before the barrage of metal reached him he felt two strong tugs on the back of his uniform, pulling him down into the trench and onto his back. He was staring up at Sasuke and Sakura crouched over him.

Then the world erupted. The soft, loamy soil of northern Fire was thrown into the sky in great geysers of expanding gas and shrapnel. The sky continued to scream. The earth began to shudder as if it threatened to split apart. Yet Naruto noticed that Sasuke seemed surprised by something else as he looked down the length of the trench. Naruto couldn't hear if his team mate was speaking, nor could he read his lips because of their masks, but when Naruto lifted his head to look in the same direction he knew exactly what Sasuke would have been saying.

"What the fuck?" he muttered.

Kakashi was walking towards them down the trench. Not running, not ducking, walking. Debris and deadly shrapnel was whizzing past him yet none of it touched him, like he was in the eye of a storm.

Then in a few more easy strides Kakashi arrived in front of them.

"Team NANBU." Kakashi didn't yell but by some chakra trick his three charges could hear him clearly.

"Namiashi-Taii has been incapacitated. This means I, as a senior officer, am now obligated to take control of this unit and complete its objectives." He said. "I also cannot leave you three to retreat to Konoha alone."

The two boys nodded in a stiff, mechanical manner. They could hardly believe what they had just seen and it took a moment for Kakashi's words to reach them at all. Sakura, however, only gulped heavily. The air was thick with dust and her throat was parched dry by the anticipation of what Kakashi might say next. She hid her shaking hands by squeezing them into the dirt beneath her.

"The enemy have us trapped in a classic L-shaped ambush." Kakashi continued. "They have elements the north and the west and in a few moments they will be carrying out a close assault. What is the correct course of action in this situation?"

The three Genin looked at Kakashi as if he had grown a second head as explosive tags continued to fall from the sky. Naruto even whipped his head around to both his team mates with an obvious unspoken question.

Kakashi sighed at their non-answer.

"We will concentrate the majority of our forces on the northern edge of our fortifications." He said. "When the barrage stops we will move aggressively and break through their northern advance and eliminate them in close order. Once done we will rally one hundred meters over the edge of the ridge and then double back and roll up the flank of their western elements. The key is to regain initiative and to never stop moving. I will not be able to keep a close eye on you three so take care of yourselves. Understood?"

The three Genin, again, gave short nods, not able to rely on their words in the current situation. Even if they wanted to they doubted they would be heard over the din of explosions.

Then just as he had arrived Kakashi left, leaving the Genin slightly dazed at the sudden turn in events. Eventually they came to their senses, and pressed in to the wall of the trench as they waited for the coming assault.

Naruto shook his head in amazement which drew the attention of the other two Genin.

"He never even ducked!" Naruto yelled.

"What?" Sasuke yelled back.

"I said, he didn't duck the whole fucking time he was talking to us!" Naruto shouted. "I don't know if that's just insane or what. It's like he doesn't give a fuck if he dies."

Just as Naruto finished speaking the explosions stopped and in their place came a blood stirring war cry from the line ahead of them.

"Here we fucking go." Naruto pulled a pair of kunai from his holster and made to go over the top when he saw Sakura still huddled by the wall of the trench.

"Pink we got to go!" he said.

He was about to lean down and drag her up to her feet when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He twisted his head around and saw Sasuke shaking his head.

"Just leave her." He said.

Naruto felt a wave of disgust lapping against his stomach that turned sour.

"What the fuck are you on about." He spat back at Sasuke and threw the boys hand from his shoulder before turning back to his other team mate.

"Sakura, you idiot, you might die out there but you're definitely dead if you stay here." He said.

He grabbed both her shoulders and shook her but she refused to look at him.

"Are you listening to me?" Naruto shouted. "We got to go or you're never going to see Konoha again!"

Sakura's porcelain mask tilted up at Naruto but hid her features. He had no way of knowing what emotions were flitting across her face but her shoulders were tense in his hands. They were shaking,

"That's not it..." She whispered.

"We don't have time for this." Sasuke hissed.

He stepped around Naruto to the other side of the girl and grasped her by the front of her tunic with both hands. Then with a grunt he threw her bodily over the lip of the trench.

"Let's move it." Sasuke shouted before jumping over himself.

"Shit, whatever works." Naruto muttered before following his lead.

As he scrambled up out of the trench Naruto saw Sasuke dragging Sakura up by the back of her harness as he ran by. She was scrambling her legs frantically, trying to get her feet under her as her team mate lifted her up and forward. Then before she could truly think she was running. The adrenaline was triggering a primal response in the depths of her brain, telling her that now that she was out in the open, it was run or die.

The three Genin were only slightly behind the bulk of the Konoha forces that were arrayed in a ragged line about a hundred and fifty meters wide. They were advancing at full speed, but unlike the enemy there were no war cries or whooping or yelling. Like ghosts they flitted across the grass as fast as their feet and chakra could take them.

Sasuke knew that this was one of the worst positions a unit could find themselves in, and even the most ideal response guaranteed casualties. The only chance of any of them surviving, however, was breaking through the closer edge of the ambush and getting out of the kill zone. He turned his neck to see his two team mates following close on his heels and he suppressed the desire to stop right then and there and slug them both in the face. Instead he slightly slowed to come abreast of them and gave them both a hard shove in opposite directions as they ran.

"Watch your spacing you morons!" he yelled. "Ten meters. Ten bloody meters! Or do you want all of us to get fragged by a single technique?"

Without waiting for a response he ran forward, picking up speed.

Under the cover of the bombardment the enemy had crept close and had been preparing to assault into the Konoha positions. They were only two hundred meters away, safely outside the scatter zone of the explosive tags, when the bombardment had come to a stop. Then, just as they were about to commence their own attack, the leaf shinobi had come charging.

Caught flat footed, the enemy's response was anaemic and Kakashi had no intention of letting them ramp up the response. Sasuke heard the man's order being shouted down the line as each shinobi that heard it shouted it out themselves.

"Smoke out front, one hundred!"

Sasuke turned his head slightly to see Naruto to his left, rummaging with one hand through one of his larger pouches before the boy came up with a fist sized cylinder held in his hand. With a short step and an elongated hop Naruto tossed it forward as did each designated man in every other squad.

A moment later a curtain of thick, opaque smoke puffed into existence between them and the enemy.

Then they charged through it.

Kunai, shuriken, and mid-range ninjutsu came tearing through the smoke, punching open spiralling holes and at times hitting home. Sasuke himself saw a Chūnin just ahead of him take a flame bullet to the chest and go down in a conflagration of crackling flesh. The enemy were firing blindly but sometimes you just got unlucky.

He grimaced as he leapt over the charred body and continued through the smoke only to feel something smash into the left side of his torso as he finally broke through to the other side.

With a scream he fell and rolled along the ground as his momentum carried him on, eventually coming to a complete stop on his back. He had been hit.

Winded and with a dull pain spreading across his chest he laid there stunned. He could feel the ground shaking beneath his spine as the charge continued on without him, and though he moved his hands towards where he thought the wound was, he couldn't bring himself to touch or even look at it.

"Not like this." He said to himself. "Not like this."

The back of his eyes stung and like a hot coal on a frozen lake his heart burned through his chest and left it feeling hollow. All those promises he had whispered in the night, now meaningless.

"I can't die like this." He whimpered. "Not like some piece of shit Genin in the middle of nowhere."

He heard laughter.

"Naruto?" Sasuke said.

The white mask topped with a shock of yellow hair came into Sasuke's field of view.

"We all taking turns on the ground?" Naruto said. "Get the hell up you fucking jackass."

The boy grabbed at him and tried to pull him up off the ground but Sasuke grabbed Naruto's wrists.

"Just leave me." Sasuke said.

"Just look, you idiot." Naruto snapped back.

"what?" Sasuke said.

He peered down at his stomach and didn't see any guts, or any blood, or anything at all that would indicate he was dying. There was only a long gash across his left side, the fabric cut cleanly, and the dull shine of steel mesh poking through.

"It was just a glancing hit." Naruto said. "And you give Sakura shit. Unbelievable."

Sasuke felt his stomach plunge right down to his feet and his whole body grow warm. He could just imagine the shit eating grin on Naruto's face and when his team mate offered a hand it took Sasuke a long second before he gripped it and began to pull himself up.

"You know," Naruto continued, "It should be pretty fucking obvious if you get hit, you can tell because-"

Naruto never finished his sentence as a kunai, from nowhere, entered through the back of the boy's neck and out the front his throat. Then a whole mess of blood splashed on Sasuke's mask.


	13. Chapter 13

Naruto slumped forward and fell onto Sasuke, gushing blood from the pulped mass of flesh and sinew that was now his throat. The warmth of it covered Sasuke's chest and his mask couldn't stop the ferric stench of it from hitting his nose. He could taste it. Tossing the limp frame of his team mate off and onto its back he looked down and saw a growing puddle of blood where there should have been a neck. Bubbles of escaping breath and mucus was churning it up into pink froth but Naruto's eyes were blank.

A dull point of half remembered training slammed against the inside of Sasuke's skull, only to dissipate as panic overtook him. His hands were frozen, hovering over Naruto's body in a poor parody of action as his subconscious mind knew it should be doing something, but not enough to spur him to move.

A moment later Sakura arrived. She too stood frozen when she saw the bloodied wreck of her team. her fingers twitched and her breath hitched, then, like something struck her, she jerked forward and came sliding to her knees next to Naruto's body. She retrieved a field dressing from her medical kit and pressed it into Sasuke's hands.

"Apply pressure to the wound." She said.

Her tone was flat and clinical, held even by her clenched jaw, and it made Sasuke look up at her. She was digging through her medical kit as Sasuke remained still with the white cotton pad gripped in his fingers.

"He's dead…" Sasuke said.

Sakura took Sasuke's hands in her own and pressed them onto Naruto's neck.

"Apply pressure to the wound." Sakura snapped.

Pulling a roll of cotton bandage out from her kit Sakura held one end in her teeth as she cut it to length with a pair of scissors in her off hand.

"I can't assess him here." she said. "We have to get him somewhere safe."

She completed bandaging Naruto's neck and placing a brace then looked up at Sasuke and waited for his response. Eventually he nodded and the pair grabbed their downed team mate to drag him away. Unknown to either of them, however, were the wisps of steam rising from Naruto's throat.

* * *

When Kakashi and Raidou's platoon came bursting through the dense bank of smoke they were about to demonstrate why Konoha was the premier continental power. The village hidden in the leaves, thanks to Sarutobi Hiruzen, 'The Professor' and 'God of Shinobi', were at the forefront of military thought. The specific doctrine that the Sandaime had developed could be summed up in three words.

Shock, awe, and fire.

It was by no coincidence that the leading line in their advance were eight Jōnin. Their chakra was charged to the brim, and just as they became visible they all slid their hands into one final seal in a practiced synchronicity.

With a roar of superheated air, a conic sheet of white hot flames came streaming from their mouths. Down the entire length of the line fire engulfed the would be attackers, but it was no ordinary fire. It flowed like water. It burned out every enemy that hoped to find shelter as it swept along the ground. Where it found flesh it stuck like molten sugar, vaporizing the fluid held in the cells by the sheer heat of contact, causing them to burst open like overfilled balloons. It was a terror weapon, short range, short lasting, and terrifyingly effective. It was a technique perfectly tailored to the brutal close combat fights that Konoha shinobi lived and breathed in their native forests.

Yet the enemy were not all amateurs. Just as many of them summoned up earthen walls or waves of water to meet the flames, saving not only themselves but also their allies around them. The majority of them, however, were still reeling or dead when the lines finally met.

Kakashi began the fight by launching two explosive kunai at the earth wall ahead of him and watched in satisfaction as the whole structure was cleaved in half by the resulting explosion. Without a second thought he jumped through the lingering cloud of dust, his Sharingan uncovered, and a kunai held in each hand.

The first enemy Kakashi encountered was staggering to his feet, his sword held limp in his hand. It was then that Kakashi realised that they appeared to be missing-nin. This one was wearing a marred Iwagakure plate wrapped around the upper portion of his arm. As a result of the exploding earth wall, shards of chakra hardened stone had peppered his entire body, leaving him bloodied and concussed. Before he could recover Kakashi had already torn out his throat.

There were three others who had been hiding behind the wall. The first came at Kakashi with a horizontal slash. Kakashi ducked beneath it and as he rose he snapped out his hand and sliced the enemy open from groin to hip in a spray of bright arterial blood. The man started to collapse yet before he even began to reach the ground the pommel of Kakashi's kunai found his temple, eliciting a squelching crack as it shattered his skull.

The second was mildly more competent and came up from his left. Kakashi weaved back, leaning side to side as he dodged a flurry of thrusts. His Sharingan was screaming in his skull, pouring a thousand images into his mind per second, then his instincts picked out the single perfect moment. There was a gap in his opponent's defence. He exploited it ruthlessly.

The missing-nin had drawn his blade just an inch too far back in preparation for his next strike. That inch was enough room for Kakashi to step forward, into and past the enemy's sphere of attack, and slip his kunai under the enemy's ribs. With a practiced precision he cut down and to the right, disembowelling the man in a single movement. The katana in the missing-nin's grip went slack only an inch from Kakashi's side and clattered to the ground.

The third and final enemy had jumped back to create space and had started on a string of seals. The fear from watching two of his comrade be cut down in moments, however, made his fingers clumsy and slow. Just as he reached the penultimate seal Kakashi twisted back and, with a flick of his wrist, planted a kunai between his eyes.

* * *

Sasuke and Sakura tried to keep low as they followed behind the main axis of advance. Stray projectiles and techniques still cut through the air, filling it with potential death that could catch either of them at any time. Naruto was being dragged behind them. They tried their best to keep him off the ground but at such an awkward angle it was proving to be a challenge.

Often they came across remains. Some had been blackened down to the bone, a twisted wreckage of what used to be a human, and others were only covered in a weeping mottling of burns that had eaten into their bodies. The grass that had once covered the hillside had also burnt away, leaving only columns of white ash floating away in the wind. Both Sasuke and Sakura struggled to keep the contents of their stomachs down their throats.

It was only a matter of meters ahead of them that they could see the fighting raging. They deliberately stayed behind it, moderating their pace in hopes of not getting caught up in the melee, but the line was moving. The Konoha shinobi were pushing forward and as Kakashi's students came up behind them they discovered the fresher bodies. Friend and foe alike littered the ground in splashes of blood and guts but they couldn't close their eyes.

It was a strangled yell that that alerted the pair. A masked figure came leaping up from a tangle of corpses behind them, blade brandished in one hand, the other pulling kunai from his shoulder. Sasuke dropped his hold on Naruto, causing Sakura to falter from the sudden shift in weight, and turned to meet the attack.

The first blow came far more quickly than Sasuke expected. His kunai was only halfway out of its holster when the blade came in a horizontal strike, aiming to split his skull in two. It was at that moment that Sasuke felt, for the first time, a true rush of adrenaline. It was ice cold and flushed through his veins in an instant and for a moment he believed he was invincible. That didn't stop him, however, from stepping neatly to the side, his body slipping into the smooth footwork he had trained over and over again.

His smaller size meant a shorter reach but he had no desire to get too close to the missing-nin. Instead of pushing in to get his kunai into play he stepped and turned into a reverse heel kick aimed at the man's jaw. This was a mistake.

Despite the absolute clarity of motion that the Sharingan offered him, the missing-nin ducked with an almost casual ease and swept Sasuke's feet out from under him. He landed heavily on his back, the breath knocked out of him.

"Sasuke!"

Sakura had finally managed to lower Naruto carefully enough not to exacerbate his injuries, just in time to see the belligerent looming over her other team mate, blade held high and ready for a downward stab.

There wasn't a single other thought that occupied her mind when she decided what to do next. She grabbed a brace of shuriken from her back, one looped around each finger and snapped them off in a wide arc. She had rushed, but the single shuriken that flew true was enough. The missing-nin was forced to roll away on his injured shoulder, buying them a few precious seconds.

Sasuke jumped back onto his feet and drew his kunai in front of him. He held it at chest height, shielding it with his offhand held in front, and then he circled the enemy who was recovering from his roll. Sakura took up a similar position on the opposite side. They had him caught in a pincer.

With a short signal conveyed by a twitch of his fingers, Sasuke charged, trusting Sakura to do the same.

The missing-nin moved laterally, trying to shift the attacks on his person to only one side. His injuries were slowing him, however, and Sasuke was quick. He darted in towards the enemy's injured side, thrusting with his kunai at the man's ribs. The man's blade came towards him in a parry but Sasuke feinted and shuffled back. He had bought enough time for Sakura to arrive and engage him from the other side.

Knowing that he was under attack from two sides the missing-nin had no choice but to turn and address the new threat. In doing so he failed to see Sasuke's actions.

The instant Sasuke had stepped back from his aborted attack he had let his kunai drop to the ground. There were exactly six hand seals he had to execute and they were ones he knew intimately.

Meanwhile Sakura had, in the turn of the missing-nin's pivot, thrown a handful of dirt into the man's face. It wasn't enough to truly blind him but it caused him to flinch and give Sakura enough time to avoid the wide arcing swing of his sword. Then she too scrambled backwards.

All this occurred in the space of two seconds and that was enough.

Sasuke's hands slammed into the final seal and a grand fireball came erupting from his mouth. It smothered the missing-nin from head to toe in a dull orange glow. Sasuke's technique was still underpowered. It failed to kill instantly. Instead it left the half alive man collapsed on the ground, drowning as his seared lungs filled with fluid and his eyes shrivelled like prunes.

For what felt like an eternity the Genin pair looked down at the dying man and then each other. Then they both spoke together.

"We need to keep going."


	14. Chapter 14

In a matter of minutes, the enemy line shattered like glass. The sheer shock power of the Konoha counter-attack left them in disarray, retreating in ones and twos, the battle itself forgotten. Those left behind, the dead, the dying, and those who had thrown down their arms, were abandoned to their fates.

It was to this backdrop of churned mud and baked stone that Kakashi met his newest opponent. He came upon him just as the man finished choking the life out of a misfortunate Chūnin in the crook of his arm, his muscles bulging like overripe fruit as they bore down on the woman's neck. Then, with a final and fatal crack, the missing-nin dropped the body and eased into a guarded stance.

There was a blank look shared between him and Kakashi, broken only when the ghost of a smile appeared on the missing-nin's face. The silver hair, the single burning red eye. It was a common feeling for the Taisa, to be recognised by those he didn't but it was then, and not when the battle had started, that Kakashi felt the blood evacuate from his extremities and flood into his core. It was an instinctual response that screamed danger.

By this point several other Konoha shinobi were arriving and were circling to the missing-nin's flanks. Kakashi, however, was too close to receive immediate help. For the first few moments at least this would be one on one.

The key advantage of the Sharingan was most useful when acting second, and so Kakashi waited, the moment stretching on and on even as he felt the chakra screaming through his head to be greedily sucked into the hungry void that existed in his left eye. In reality it was only a split second before his opponent came charging.

Yet the eye, given to him so long ago, was still not entirely his. Kakashi could feel it writhe in his skull as the tomoe began to spin and drink in the details of the incoming enemy. He could see the missing-nin's feet digging into the earth as he propelled himself forward. They dug too deep, even for the man's great size, and so Kakashi reacted. The kunai in his left hand shot out with a flick of his arm even as he stepped to his left and began to duck. He didn't lower his eyes, however, and was rewarded with the sight of the kunai glancing off the man's raised arm without even a scratch.

Then the fist came swooping in, a right hook that Kakashi was already beneath. It sailed over his head, just barely grazing his hair. In the next instant Kakashi stepped forward, dragging the point of the kunai in his right hand along the flank of his enemy. The sensation that came through the blade confirmed it. Stone skin.

It was an advanced technique but Konoha had not been bitter rivals with Iwa to no effect, and neither had Kakashi been idle during the last great war. It slowed its user, making them as clumsy as it did impenetrable and with the advantage in speed Kakashi easily transitioned into a reverse hook kick aiming to push the man, who was now behind him, further off balance.

What he didn't expect was the level of mastery this particular shinobi had. In that moment of vulnerability, the missing-nin softened his skin, it becoming lighter as the chakra withdrew. As a result, his almost lethargic turn suddenly snapped to completion and Kakashi's blow was now sailing towards his enemy's open palm which was again, rapidly hardening.

Kakashi aborted the attack by throwing his other leg to follow the first and in doing so landed on the palm of his outstretched hand. To those watching, this seemed insane, but then they understood. A pulse wave of chakra emanated from Kakashi's palm in contact with the earth and in its wake the ground was reduced to a super fine sand.

It was an adaptation of the Hidden Mole, a C-rank supplementary technique used for moving through the earth. Predictably, the missing-nin started to sink.

Off balance and immobilised from the knees down, the stone man couldn't even hope to grab his opponent as Kakashi disappeared into the ground like a fish diving into water. He couldn't even follow him despite knowing the elementary technique, the ground too saturated in Kakashi's chakra to take his own.

Then, before he could concern himself with the Jounin further, the first projectile slammed into his back.

Both schools of thought when it came to dealing with stone skin wielders were demonstrated inside that circle of Konoha shinobi. Fire, to literally cook the man inside his own skin was a favourite, and the other was to crack him open with blunt force trauma.

When Kakashi finally rose from ground as the noise at the surface subsided, the missing-nin was mangled. A rock bullet had ricocheted off the man's leg, leaving it pulped and twisted the wrong way as his technique gave out. Several kunai were also embedded in his chest as wisps of smoke came off what remained of his clothes. Yet somehow he was still alive.

"You didn't run." Kakashi said.

The man forced out a wet chuckle from between his cracked lips.

"No point." He wheezed.

"Why?" Kakashi said.

"Failure... Dead anyway..." He replied. "Watch for - silver bells..."

Then he died.

Kakashi only paused for a moment before he bent down to check over the corpse. The reason it was of particular interest to Kakashi was the quality of the man's once existent clothes. The tightly spun and dyed fabrics, the quality leather, and the gold jewellery singled him out from the others. A quick rummage through his pouches, now almost falling apart, gave Kakashi the reason why. A thin book, a hand span in size and bound with strings and lambskin, revealed who the man was. It was a ransom book. Daisuke Ando was a Kogashira of Rokkaku's Brigade, worth eight Ryo two hundred Mon on his safe return, a quarter of that for his body. They were a mercenary company registered in the Land of Earth. Kakashi had never heard of them but that name was not new.

"Kagoshima-Chūi." Kakashi called.

The squad Kakashi was operating in, Raidou's squad, had set up a small perimeter around their ad-hoc captain while he carried out his investigation. The sounds of battle had gradually started to fade away but they had been snuck up on once already.

"Yes, Taisa."

Kagoshima, Raidou's second in command, was a dark slip of a man. When he stepped towards Kakashi and knelt beside him, even the veteran ex ANBU had trouble hearing his approach. He was light on his feet.

"Reign in the men. I want them at the rally for further orders." Kakashi said.

The man nodded and turned to two other members in the squad.

"You heard the Taisa." He said. "No stragglers."

The two runners left in a burst of chakra. Those men who had gotten their blood up had chased after the fleeing enemy, cutting them down from behind as they found them. Losing cohesion now, however, would be fatal and Kakashi was certain that the northern force would no longer be a problem. Without leadership and with heavy casualties they were no longer combat effective. It would take someone of Hashirama Senju's calibre to get them to return in any semblance of good order.

It was only a moment later that Kakashi and the remainder of the squad touched down at the rally point, three hundred meters into the forest and one hundred over a small ridge from their original outpost. Kakashi wasted no time pulling out a map of the local area and stuffing what food he could down his throat. He also lowered his forehead guard to cover his left eye.

"Who did we leave to screen our western flank?" Kakashi said.

"Tomori and Sugawara." Kagoshima replied.

Kakashi swallowed the rest of the rice tack with a swig from his canteen before noting the first of the squads arriving in his vicinity. Without direction they took up proper defensive positions around the rally point. It was a level of caution they had failed to exhibit earlier when Raidou was in command. It was something that deserved further investigation when there was time.

Just as Kakashi was about to speak again he was interrupted by his students crashing into the small clearing. The two cadets, with Naruto carried between them, came romping through the undergrowth with a complete lack of caution.

"Taisa." Sakura shouted at him before she and Sasuke collapsed to the ground. "Naruto got hit!"

She was breathing heavily, as was Sasuke next to her, and they both were covered from head to toe in a thick slather of mud. Only a few finger widths of white mask shined through from where they had wiped it away.

Without prompting a pair of medic-nin came and took Naruto's limp form, moving him over with the other casualties a short distance away.

"He'll be fine." Kakashi said.

"What do you mean he'll be – " Sakura started but was cut off.

"Do you still have those incendiaries?" Kakashi said.

She froze, hesitated, then nodded.

"Good." Kakashi continued.

Without further elaboration he brought the groups attention to the map he had at his feet.

"Kagoshima, the trap charts." He said.

The man pulled out the relevant document without a word and smoothed it out next to the map. Another thirty seconds passed as Kakashi cross referenced the chart and the map.

"Pay attention you two. This is our current position." Kakashi said, "Four hundred meters due north of our outpost. Eat while I talk."

Kagoshima coughed.

"Taisa… is this really the time for a lesson?" he said.

Kakashi lifted his eyebrows and pasted on a smile.

"Our students are our future Kagoshima-Chui." He said.

Sasuke almost choked on the typically nonsensical answer his instructor loved to give. The food in his mouth only complicated his reaction. Kagoshima, however, just froze up before his shoulders slumped forward.

"ah… of course." He said.

"So," Kakashi went on "We are here, having broken through their close assault element. Roughly 30 combatants. Their anchor point and base of fire is somewhere to the west of the outpost. Blue, considering eighty percent of the enemy seem to be ex-Land of Earth what can we infer?"

Unlike most times Sasuke's answer was quick in coming.

"Typical Iwa split for an L ambush of two to three, so likely twenty plus an Iwa size command squad of eight members for their anchor."

"Good." Kakashi said, then snapped off another question. "Pink, their likely position?"

Sakura quickly swallowed what she had in her mouth, perhaps before it was quite chewed enough, and answered.

"Well usually they would want a base of fire no further than three to four hundred meters, since that is the maximum throwing distance but this can be extended if from a higher elev-"

"A short answer is better in the middle of a battle Kōhosei." Kakashi said.

"North eighty-two west, six hundred meters, behind the edge of that saddle." She snapped out the words as quick as she could and pointed at the spot on the map.

"Yes, that would be my choice, but there are a few other positions." Kakashi said. "Kagoshima, what's their next course of action?"

There was a sudden gap in the conversation as Kakashi's question sunk in. Sakura thought she heard a stifled snicker from somewhere and found that she too could just barely contain herself. Overall, whether it was the food, the situation, or some combination thereof Sakura found she felt almost giddy. The fact that Naruto was lying half dead just feet away, that a dozen or so of her comrades had died, that she too could be dead soon, seemed inconsequential in regards to the sudden and irrepressible smile that lit up her face.

"She's lost it." Sasuke muttered.

"No, she's just experiencing a survival high for the first time." Kakashi said. "Chūi?"

Kagoshima just shook his head and muttered darkly about the Sharingan and going loopy.

"If they're smart they'll cut their losses and pull back." He finally said. "Try again later."

"Ah," Kakashi said. "That is precisely what we are not going to let them do, and here's how."

He gave a pointed look to Sakura and then laid the trap chart over the map.


	15. Chapter 15

Hoshino Ito trudged through the undergrowth. Like her hair, her clothes clung to her heavy with sweat. She could barely ignore the itching that prickled all over her exposed legs and arms. They were covered in scratches and minor nicks, and they were thin, far too thin.

She wondered if it was true, that Konoha-nin were all short sighted from living in these never-ending forests. The old men at home, the retired shinobi, had said that Konoha eyes never fully developed because they never had to look at anything further than a hundred meters away. She could believe it.

It was only a second longer that she let these frivolous thoughts distract her. The battlefield was no time for it. Luckily or not she was flanked on each side by the last friends she had left in the world, Arai and Matsui. They had been a Genin team. No, they still were. They would have been Chūnin soon but that was no long possible. Six months, it had already been so long since they had left their village, unbelievable as it was. It felt like it had been longer. Constantly on the run, hounded, threatened, unemployed. Six long months of sleeping with one eye open and their backs to a wall.

Arai had given her a toothy grin when they had finally found their first job. Toothy, because half of his mouth had been punched out the side of his cheek by another missing-nin. That was a month ago. She could see that he wanted to say something like he always did, his eyes shining with some joke or comment that was bursting to spill out. Then he remembered, and it faded way. He almost never spoke anymore. It came out mangled, left his chin wet with his own spit.

Matsui had placed his hand on Arai's shoulder then, with that severe expression that never left. It was only made worse by the puckered scar where his left eye should have been. Still, Arai's toothy smile had come back.

Even Hoshino couldn't deny that small flame that had sprung up in the depths of her chest. Pay and loot. Pay and loot, which meant food, a roof over their heads, weapons, clothes, a reprieve from the fucking mess that had been the last six months. It was supposed to be an easy job too, simple. Long range support with explosives provided by the employer. A strong arm, a knowledge of the proper technique, even shinobi only on the verge of Chūnin like them could manage it.

Later that same evening, in their camp near the no-name town they had been recruited in, Arai had revealed a brown bottle, his eyebrows waggling up and down. Hoshino had laughed, even Matsui had smiled. They had cracked it open, taking turns to take long slugs of the burning liquid. They had built up their campfire until it was roaring, and they had sung, and they had danced, and for a night they had forgotten.

Then, as Hoshino had rested her head to sleep, there had been the traitorous whisper in the back of her mind.

"You are, and always have been, expendable."

In her alcoholic stupor and the warm glow of that night, she had banished the thought. Now, it came back to her, as she marched through the forests of Fire, a scarred Iwa missing-nin leading them onward into the depths.

* * *

Iwaji Kawamura stood, arms crossed, his finger tapping his bicep in a constant tattoo. In the midday heat, the humidity of the region was beading on his skin. It stunk. The fetid smell of rotting leaves, of bog like petrichor, and a hint of ash swirled through his mouth with every breath.

The ad-hoc forces provided to him were exhausted. A random bunch of missing-nin not worth the metal on their bodies. He looked over them and only barely held back the urge to spit. Almost to a man they were catching their breath, doubled over, or lying on the ground.

"Back in Iwa - " he said.

"You are no longer welcome in Iwa, Kawamura-san."

He turned to face the woman who interrupted him, a sneer pasted over his face. It caused the thick ropy scar across his throat to twist up into a mockery of a smile.

"Ten minutes of long range throwing and they're already flat on their backs." he said. "Their accuracy is dog-shit too. If it were up to me they would all be flogged."

The woman's gaze failed to falter despite his grotesque visage. She only looked past him with the same cold indifference she looked at all the others. Pale skin, coal black hair, she almost faded into the muggy, overcast day. The only ornamentation she had were the small bells woven into her braided hair.

"It matters little." she said. "You have been given every advantage."

The unit was arrayed in a ragged line hugging the saddle of a ridge some six hundred meters from the enemy. Artillery work was always hard on chakra reserves, more so this close to the edge of their maximum range. Still, distance was the best defence for trash like this. Too far, too close, it was always a precarious balance. This delay, however, was unacceptable.

"Except troop quality eh?" Iwaji scoffed in response before raising his voice to the rest of the men.

"On your feet you fuck ups! We should be crushing those tree-huggers and looting their corpses, not resting on our asses. up!"

They began to get to their feet, some still unsteady from the rapid expenditure of chakra they had just gone through. The woman's right brow raised almost imperceptibly, a question dangling there. He ignored it.

"You coming with?" he said instead.

"No." she replied. "Do your job."

Iwaji huffed and muttered under his breath before turning back to his troops.

"Ishika, go out ahead and see what Ando is up to. The rest of you in echelon right. We're moving in and I'll bugger the lot of you if Ando takes all the goods so move, move, move!"

Iwaji slipped in behind the formation as he and the twenty-seven shinobi under his command made their way down the slope. It was ragged and ugly, some members unused to moving through the dense woods. Soon, the woman was out of sight and out of mind.

They had only made it a hundred meters or so when Ishika returned, another shinobi just behind him.

"What is it?" Iwaji snapped.

He vaguely recognised the other man by his clothes as they fell into formation beside him, but then again most of the trash had been recruited in ones or twos not even a week ago.

"Ando-Sama wishes to inform you that they are pushing the Konoha platoon back and will soon break them. He won't require help running down the remnants" the man reported.

Iwaji, no longer able to hold it, spat.

"Greedy fucking bastard." he said. "He did this the last time we had the chance to loot a platoon from the big five. What about you huh? How did you piss him off to get sent back to us?"

The man only smiled.

"The fight happened outside of the Konoha camp. I came to tell you that."

Iwaji laughed and clapped the man on the shoulder.

"So, Ando didn't get to touch it huh?" he said. "Well at least this wasn't a complete waste of time. You get a double share."

He raised his hand in the air to signal a halt, then with a twirl of his finger summoned the other squad leaders onto his position.

"Listen up," he said. "Ando is going to be off running down the leftovers. but-"

A wicked smile slashed across his face.

"He didn't get into the enemy camp. So, we're gonna go there now and strip it bare."

* * *

Hoshino had shared a look with her companions when they heard the enemy camp was empty. The trio thought about the forty mon they had left between them, just barely a tenth of a tenth of a ryo, and two of them smiled. Hoshino, however, only kept moving.

Six hundred meters, in terrain this thick, was a matter of minutes for shinobi, and with every second that passed Hoshino felt her stomach tighten. The washed-out sky muted colour and shadow, and the restarting rain hushed out the sounds around them. They were moving too quickly, too quick to see what was in front of them as a unit. It was a mistake, even Hoshino knew it. Shew knew it, but the camp was empty. It was empty, and with a group like this it would be first come first served for Genin like them. She kept running, her two friends following behind her.

The trees, the endless trees, they came at her just as she came at them, each almost identical to the last. She weaved, she leapt, focused on keeping herself upright as the whole formation moved faster and faster, their feet alight with greed.

Then the dying started.

Kunai and shuriken came whipping through the trees, a spread of sharpened metal coming at her just as she came at them. The first volley missed her, by pure luck. In a split second, five were dead.

She didn't think, she dug her heels into the forest debris, twisted her center of gravity, and turned until she was on her toes and hands. Scrambling to her feet, she yelled.

"Ambush!"

She watched the backs of her two friends as they dashed into cover. The screams, the yells, the whip cracks of splitting timber, she ignored it all and dove behind the same fallen tree as her friends. Through her back she could feel the thuds of metal striking their cover, the staccato beat reminding her of just how many of the things Konoha-nin carried. She grabbed her two friends and brought them into a pseudo-huddle.

"Leapfrog fifteen meters. Arai first." She said.

With a nod Arai started to sprint back as Hoshino and Matsui laterally leapt from cover to cover, throwing kunai at the closest things that looked like a target. Then Matsui sprinted back as Arai took up a position to the rear and started throwing his own complement of weapons as he jumped from cover to cover. In this way they fell back, each member taking turn to run as the other two kept watch, throwing kunai and shuriken. They had no chakra. None they could spare. They could only run, only use what tools they had on them.

They had made it a hundred meters, a hundred meters further than they should have, when Matsui cried out. Hoshino turned, and was almost blinded. A great pyrotechnic flash bleached the forest white. Then, the blast wave hit her, smashing her chest like a physical blow. When her vision returned, she was on her back, sucking in heaving breaths. She propped herself up and was confronted by the forest ablaze. It wasn't natural. The voracity of the flames, the way it swarmed across the ground, ate up the canopy, it wasn't natural.

She felt a hand grip her arm and pull her to her feet.

"Arai?" she croaked.

Her mouth was dry, almost as if the sudden firestorm had torn the moisture out of her.

"We have to go south!"

It was Matsui, his normally handsome face hooded with free-flowing blood.

"What about -" Hoshino said.

"He's gone ahead. Just run!"

She felt him shove her forward and she ran. She ran without thought, without looking back. She never saw the kunai that cored out Matsui's skull. It hit him from the left, the side he was missing his eye. He never saw it either.

Hoshino didn't know how long she ran. There were shadows now, a thick chiaroscuro tinge cast by the flickering flames. She could barely tell where she was going, her heart in her ears, the jolt of every step shooting up her legs.

"Hoshino, stop!"

The familiar voice halted her. It was Arai with tears in his eyes.

"Arai!" she shouted back.

"Don't come any closer."

Arai was between two tree roots. There was no fire, no enemies. She flared and cycled her chakra. There was no genjutsu. She took a step forward.

"Don't come any closer! Please, please, please."

Spit dribbled down his chin as he begged, each word forcing more from the gaps in his teeth. He could barely form the words.

"You have to go. Go Hoshino. Go. Go. You have to go."

Hoshino shook her head and took another step, her hands up, reaching towards the boy.

"What are you talking about Arai. We have to go. We-"

Something wretched tore out from the boy's throat. A ragged keening noise that whistled through his broken teeth.

"Go. Go. Go. Live. For me. Please."

She paled when she saw the spike of metal that hard torn through Arai's foot. She knew he was channelling his chakra there, keeping it flowing through the mechanism, stopping it from continuing its wicked purpose.

"We can disarm it." she said.

Even as she said it she knew it wasn't true. Her hands were shaking, her feet felt like lead, and she could only taste bitter blood on her lips.

"No time. No chakra. I'm sorry Hoshino. Say goodbye to Matsui for me."

He hung his head and wouldn't look at her again. So, Hoshino ran. She ran and later tried to pretend she didn't hear the muffled crump of detonation.

* * *

Kakashi surveyed the remains of the ambush site, shrugging off the last of the clothing he had borrowed from a dead missing-nin from Kumo. Then, for the second time that day, he covered his Sharingan. He could feel the strain starting to set in. Utilising genjutsu through the Sharingan was never particularly pleasant for him. It never would be.

The rest of the platoon were combing through the enemy dead now, recovering equipment, looting valuables, tallying the results.

Blue and Pink arrived a moment later, slightly sooty but seemingly uninjured.

"Report." Kakashi said.

They both nodded, Blue almost imperceptibly. Sakura composed herself, tearing her eyes away from the scene of a Konoha-nin methodically stabbing each enemy body on the ground as he walked by them.

"Yellow is still unconscious, but his pulse and breathing are stable." She said. The following "somehow" was only whispered

"Otherwise the aid station was quiet Nothing to report." Blue finished.

Kagoshima was the next to arrive. For a moment, even he seemed to be dazed by the sheer scale of the destruction they had wrought on the local terrain. The fires were still burning, a vast bank of white smoke building to the west. It took a moment for him to remember why he was there.

"Taisa - it seems the Jōnin and most of his command squad managed to escape. We found signs that he tunnelled under the fires and the number of bodies corroborates. Should we pursue?"

"No. Is Raidou-Taii still alive?" Kakashi said.

"Uh, yes." Kagoshima said.

"There will be an investigation Chūi."

The man stiffened, but that was the only thing that betrayed him.

"We effectively destroyed a full size Iwa platoon Taisa."

Kakashi hummed and cradled his chin.

"Qualitatively, no." He said. "And mistakes were still made. Though perhaps not by Raidou's hand."

"Taisa?"

"Gather the platoon. This is was only a delaying action for them." He said. "There is more to be done."


	16. Chapter 16

The clouds had cleared. The setting sun tinged the sky like a drop of blood sinking into a deep, dark pool, a drop of blood, old with rot, coagulating red to black. The outpost was now an aid station, and as night descended the whimpering of wounded men only grew. Of the ten still warm bodies, only four were still standing, Sakura, Sasuke, and a pair of medic-nin. There were six more bodies, though corpses now, shrouded with their own cloaks. They were kept together, under cover, each moss coloured mound topped with their forehead protectors. They were waiting to be taken home.

Outside of the camp, a single fire still burned. A pit, almost filled to the brim with the enemy dead, continued to exude the stench of cooking meat. It blanketed the area with its oddly sweet, charred smell. Sasuke tried to swallow the bile that pooled in his mouth. He was holding the arms of another corpse. This one, a young girl, perhaps only a year or two older than himself, was the last.

"Did you know?"

He barely heard Sakura's whispered question over the crackling of cooking fat, and the throaty croaks of carrion craving crows. To his silence Sakura bent over and grasped the body by the legs. Together, they threw it into the pit. For a minute they both peered into the flames, watching the body burn. The dead girl was thin, scarred, wearing little that wasn't worn or patched in numerous places. Come morning she would be nothing but ash.

"Did you know it would be like this?" Sakura asked again.

He tore his gaze away to peer at Sakura's face, cast in the glow, blank and still as if hewn from stone. Her mask was hanging from her belt, dirtied, chipped, gleaming white where the mud and soot had been scraped away.

Sasuke inhaled, worked his jaw. His thoughts drifted to his brother.

"No." He said.

He thought about his family, about the Uchiha. The clan histories stretched back hundreds of years. In that time, he wondered how many of his ancestors had stood in his place, feeding the flames with the dead. Though, he realised, none as often as him, not when it came to their own.

"But it doesn't matter." He said.

Sakura tensed. Her hands balled up into fists, shaking at her sides. She wondered what he saw in front of them, if not the same thing as her. One misstep was all the distance between her and that pit.

"Nothing matters to you." She muttered under her breath.

When no biting reply came Sakura tried to meet his eyes, only to see Sasuke turn away. His shoulders slumped, and for a moment he seemed unsteady on his feet. She approached him, one hand outstretched but uncertain why.

"I always thought-"

"Don't put your selfish expectations on me." He said. "I don't owe you a thing. Quit, and forget about all this. You're not cut out for it."

He started to walk away, some part of him not daring to look back. He had almost made it out of the circle of light, when a hand grasped his shoulder. It spun him around and Sakura seized him by the front of his tunic with both hands.

"You're right. It wasn't supposed to be about you. I didn't even know you existed when I signed up for all this." She said. "But you- you- what the hell is wrong with you? If you don't care about anyone or anything but your own ambition, if you only want to take and take, what makes you any better than your brother?"

Sasuke grabbed her back, pulling her up and closer, almost choking her with her own clothing.

"Don't. You, Naruto, neither of you can understand." He said.

"How can we when you refuse to tell us anything." She said.

Sasuke shut his eyes and tilted his head back with a long sigh.

"...Akari, the neighbour's girl, would always sneak into our backyard to use our swing and mother would pretend she never noticed. Touma-san, a retired shinobi, would sneak sweets into my pocket whenever he saw me walk by. Hidekazu-sama, one of the elders, planted every tree in the district and took care of all of them without pay. Fujiko-san ran the local grocery store and would always give me a little something extra whenever we shopped there. Etsuko-san-"

Sakura's grip began to slacken.

"every summer she would make plum jam and would always come by with a jar. Daiji-san forged the first kunai I ever used, and when I damaged it the same day by throwing it at a rock, he fixed it for free and taught me how to sharpen it myself. Chikao-san manned the police booth around the corner and every time I kicked a ball over a wall or into a tree, he would help me get it back. Once I kicked a ball into Maaya-san's yard. Maaya-san was the best dancer in the clan and Chikao-san ended up marrying her. They asked me when I was six to be the Nakodo at their wedding."

Sasuke glared at her, almost nose to nose. He could feel her hitching breath on his face.

"Those are just a few, all of them Uchiha, all of them dead." He said. "He didn't just kill my family, he killed my clan. Every single person we knew growing up, every single person in our lives, everyone who cared for us or we cared about, everyone who made up what Konoha even was to me. So, no. Nothing. Else. Matters. Not even you. Not to me. If you really want to live this life, stop being so weak."

She was crying now. The half-light, the way her hair framed her face, it stirred something in Sasuke's chest. It was a searing, ice cold grip on his heart, and for a moment he was transported somewhere far away, to memories he had long censured.

He pushed her. Then he walked away from the fire, and into the gloom of the night, neither knowing or caring where he was going.

* * *

Later that evening Sakura sat next to Naruto. He was on a makeshift cot, under a canvas shade, in one of the larger dugouts. The only light was an oil lantern that was hung on one of the tent poles holding up the ceiling. He was just lying there, almost unmoving. His eyelids flickered under some dream and his breathing was steady, but that was it. This was the most still Sakura had ever seen him.

With a grimace she noticed that the bandages around his throat had soaked through again. She pulled her med-kit into her lap and retrieved a pair of scissors, a roll of bandages, and dressings. She flinched when she saw the stitching across his throat when she cut away the soiled bandages, but her hands never stopped. She applied a mixture of balsam and oil to the new dressing before pressing it onto his neck, so it wouldn't stick to the fragile wound in the delicate flesh of the throat. Then she added another dressing, untreated, to act as an absorbent layer. Wrapping her work in a new layer of bandages she nurtured the small feeling of getting something perfectly right.

When she was finished she held her hands up to the light, examining the pale white scars, scabs, and callouses that littered them. The underside of her fingernails were dark with dirt and dried blood, none of it her own.

"What are you doing?" a voice wheezed

Sakura jumped in her seat.

"Naruto, you're awake!" she said.

"Yeah, yeah, I - " he coughed "fuck, shit that hurts... water?"

Sakura quickly retrieved her canteen, uncapped it, and lifted Naruto's head to help him drink. After one or two small mouthfuls she eased him back down.

"That's better. Thanks Sakura-chan." He said. "How long have I been out?"

She shook her head. His voice was still barely louder than a whisper, and it had gained a rasping timbre.

"Not even a day." She said. "Which shouldn't even be possible."

Naruto chuckled, only to grimace in pain before easing back into a small lopsided smile.

"What can I say, I do the impossible all the time." He said. "Where's everybody else?"

"The Taisa took the platoon to Wadamori to check on the delegation. Only us three, a couple medic-nin, and the incapacitated were left behind. We're in the outpost." She said.

"That makes sense." Naruto said. "So... where's the bastard?"

Naruto internally winced as soon as the words left his mouth. He braced himself.

"Patrolling."

For a moment, things stopped making sense to Naruto. He looked at his female team mate much like he might have if he saw a stone ignore gravity, or the sun rise from the west. Yet her face betrayed nothing beyond exhaustion, heavy bags under her eyes and a general pallor over her skin.

"Ah... okay." He said. "Something bothering you?"

Sakura just barely tilted forward, as if to stand, before an abortive motion rocked her back into her seat. She seemed to settle as if that small effort reminded her of just how fatigued she was. Naruto waited, waging an internal struggle to decide what he should say next, or, uncharacteristically, if he should say anything at all, but eventually she answered him.

"It's... It's nothing." She said.

"Well I'm not going anywhere." he said.

There was another long wait. The only sign of the passage of time was the lamp flame growing ever so smaller as its reservoir slowly emptied.

"Why do we do this?" Sakura eventually said.

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific." Naruto replied.

"Being shinobi... Killing people."

The tension that had been building and building in Naruto's stomach eased off, if only a little. He had asked something very similar once to his grandfather.

"Really hitting me with the hard stuff huh." He said. "Well... It's for Konoha... Konoha isn't just a place, it's a people. Our friends, our families, our team mates, all those precious things endure because of what the few of us are willing to do. Jiji told me that, and I believe it. Konoha thrives because of awesome shinobi like you and me, I mean look how good you fixed me up. Oh, and of course, I'm gonna be Hokage. Kind of hard to do that if there's no Konoha."

Sakura tried to roll her eyes, but instead found a smile sneaking onto her face.

"You really mean that don't you?" She said.

"When am I not serious about being Hokage?" Naruto said. "But seriously, Sakura, I think we make a kickass team. I know things can be hard. I really know. But with a few good people beside you, nothings impossible. I give you my Uzumaki guarantee."

Sakura laughed. It was short, but for the first time in a long time she felt it bubble up from the pit of her stomach, and it left her feeling light.

"When did you become such a sweet talker Naruto?" she said.

"Heh, yeah I can be pretty good when I try." He said.

Sakura stood, and when Naruto tried to push himself up, she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You should still be resting Naruto. I'll go get you something to eat."

* * *

Naruto woke with a start, his body coming to a sudden jerk with the disorientating feeling of falling in your sleep. When he sensed that nothing was awry he relaxed. There was a mess kit on the floor next to his cot, the food in it already cold. He realised that he must have fallen asleep by the time Sakura had come back. A small part of him was grateful that he had. He hadn't wanted to alarm the girl, but he still couldn't move his legs. He couldn't feel them. Everything from the waist down was simply numb, like it wasn't even there.

Naruto lifted one hand to his throat. It was completely swaddled in bandages, but he knew. He had felt that kunai cleave through the back of his neck and punch out the front. He had been aware when he had collapsed onto Sasuke, aware of the blood, almost burning hot pouring down his chest and off his chin. It really had taken him a remarkable about of time to truly fall unconscious, but his memories of that time remained a haze. His chakra also felt numb, almost sluggish as it sloshed around his body. There was so little of it, an anaemic trickle where there usually was a torrent.

He had been useless. No, worse. He had to be carried by his two team mates until he got all the way back here. The dirt walls of the dugout, the canvas ceiling, he almost felt like he was already lying in his grave.

He was pondering this when he heard the distinctive two-part tone of one of his traps going off nearby. An initial pop of an oil charge being aerosolised and tossed into the air by a tiny explosive seal, and the second, much larger thud as a heat seal ignited the oil into a thermobaric detonation. Of course, not many would have heard the first sound, but the main charge was astoundingly loud. The shockwave even managed to knock loose a bit of dirt from the walls of the dugout. Of course, there was little he could do, even knowing someone had stepped in one of his traps, so Naruto settled on waiting.

He didn't wait long. There were muffled footsteps just outside the door.

"Oi guys." He tried to shout, but couldn't "What the hell is going on? Someone stepped in one of my traps. I'm sure of it."

Muffled voices travelled through the door, but they weren't in reply to him. Naruto was about to call out again when the door exploded into a shower of splinters, followed by Sasuke's limp form crashing into the opposite wall.

"We would have just died if there was another trap on that door." A second voice chastised whoever had just thrown Sasuke into the room. "Kingai already got blown the hell away."

"Well we ain't dead so relax."

The owners of the two voices revealed themselves. They stepped into the entrance almost casually, their caution only signalled by the leading stranger carefully sweeping the room with his eyes. They came to rest on Naruto.

"There's the target." He said.

The first was clearly a man, the second a woman. Like Sohei they both had their heads and faces covered with a white cowl, a chain wrapped around their foreheads with small silver bells threaded between the links.

"And who the fuck are you?" Naruto croaked.


End file.
